


drunk with thoughts of you

by koosjunhoe



Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Cheating, F/M, and Hanbin is always there when you need someone to be there for you, best friend!jinhwan, best friend!junhoe, bobby has an attitude problem, but not really, idol!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koosjunhoe/pseuds/koosjunhoe
Summary: “Once I tell you, you can’t act like I never said it.” Hanbin takes a deep breath as he turns to Youra. She looks back to him, confused, but nods in agreement. “You won’t blank me even more or block my number to avoid me. Because you wanted me to tell you.”Youra nods again. Crossing her arms over her chest, she takes a step back from the railing. Her heels are pressed together and the cold air pushes her hair with it, breeze causing her to shiver. “Alright, tell me. I won’t do any of that.”“Promise?”“I mean…” Hanbin holds out his little finger for her to link with. She can’t help but smile at his gesture, doing as he requests. “Sure. I promise I won’t block your number or blank you even more.”Hanbin hums contently. He pauses for a moment to look back at the door, but turns to Youra a second later. “I don’t think it was a mistake.”





	drunk with thoughts of you

**Author's Note:**

> so you MAY have read this before as a hanbin x you on my old AO3. I always wanted to rewrite it so that's exactly what I'm doing, since i love the concept of this and i always wanted to work on the character developments that i originally started. I may start doing this with some old works of mine in the future but this one was a must. anyway, hope you enjoy this longer, extended version of nefarious (with a new name)!
> 
> UPDATE 4/11 - i added a new part near to the end :)

Do you know that feeling when you wake up before your alarm?

It can be five minutes, even twenty seconds before it goes off, but there is something so _appealing_ about being able to shut your eyes one more time and have that little bit extra sleep. Maybe even just having a moment to lay there and feel the softness of your blankets with your head supported by the pillow as your body sends itself back in the deep, dark bliss of unconsciousness.

You’re sure most people have caught onto the trick of setting another alarm to get the same effect - _kind of,_ it’s a bit more forced when it’s a blaring alarm sound from your shitty phone which you’ve thrown against the wall a few billion times. People just liked to live in some kind of luxury from time to time.

That feeling, however, was not coming today.

Youra hadn’t set an alarm at all last night, despite it being a Tuesday and knowing she had work today.

Because she’s stupid, maybe.

Most definitely stupid.

When other people have fights with their boyfriends, they go to their friend’s place, cry and shout a little and maybe give a few wine-induced texts in their boyfriend’s way on how angry they are at the whole situation.

A less common way to approach that Youra had taken, was to drop everything she had to do, cry in the car and end up back in her own bed, lights still on and curtains not drawn. Sounds great, right? Well, it was. Just until she turns around and realises that her shitty fight-night was not spent alone.

“What the fuck?”

Her eyes widen at the shuffling of covers and she pulls her hands to her mouth to shut herself up, mostly so she didn’t have to deal with one other person here that was awake. She sits up fully, using the covers to shield her body from anyone else who may have been here too. What? She couldn’t take chances.

“Who the _fuck_?”

Part of her hopes it’s the boyfriend. She really, _really_ does. As much as she wanted to shake the body next to her and be like _so we made up did we_, there’s something about the situation which makes her think that’s definitely not Bobby.

It’s too quiet, there’s too many covers and he _always_ turns the lights off because he can’t sleep when there’s too much light. More importantly, Bobby would every night without fail hold her close to him because he hated sleeping on his own. If it wasn’t her, it was a pillow.

This person was perfectly fine sleeping without her.

Part of her wishes she’d have just woke up somewhere else now.

Convincing herself that she should _try_ to sort out some of this situation now, she moves carefully to the edge of the bed and picks up her dress from yesterday. It smells like alcohol and body spray, cheap alcohol at best, but it will do in some coverage before she runs to the bathroom and considers how she was going to get herself out of this one.

Because she’s not a bad person.

Youra and Bobby had fought once before this and _she_ apologised to him when really it was him in the wrong. He even said so a few days later over some beer, when he was sure she wasn’t actually listening. When that happened, all she did was cry in his bathroom for ten minutes because he was _really_ harsh with his words and then realised maybe she was just as bad.

Here was the kicker - no, she wasn’t as bad as him.

Bobby was always the worst when he got angry, he was past the point of being angry even. He would turn into one of those sims with steam coming out of his ears and a desire to destroy everything around him. His eyes would be red and he’d say anything that came to mind even if he didn’t mean it.

Like, for example, the final straw yesterday afternoon.

_You’d be nothing here without me._

Oh, because _you’re the head of legal for YG are you Bobby? You gave me this job here did you Bobby? You think you’re so important Bobby?_

You think my entire life is based around you, is it Bobby?

All Youra managed to say was _fine._ It was easier to walk away from him and act like he didn’t exist then to argue with him anymore about something that he wouldn’t care about come next month. He didn’t mean it, she was sure.

That took away from the true silver lining, anyway. They had only had two _big_ fights in three years. Anyone would be jealous.

Jinhwan and Junhoe were, actually. They stopped her once and (despite the fact Junhoe admitted maybe _he_ would have asked her out if Bobby hadn’t have beat him to it, which she never mentioned again) told her that they envied her relationship with Bobby. It set a great example for Hanbin, too, with his whole I’ve never had a relationship so I rely on you guys to show me what’s good mindset. She hoped. Maybe not; they weren’t so good of a couple after all.

Somewhere inside of Youra, there’s some hidden courage to see who it was that laid beside her. Unfortunately (but also fortunately, in some ways) she’s unable to find that courage and instead ends up running straight to the bathroom and closing the door gently, locking it straight after.

Ten minutes and she’ll check. Ten minutes and she’ll look a touch better, feel a touch better and want to _die_ a little less. All she has to do is check her phone for any messages and make sure that she didn’t post anything stupid.

Yeah, her phone… which is sitting under her pillow as she stares at the locked door. Great, way to go. Now she can’t check.

It’s fine, though. She runs some water into the sink and splashes the lukewarm liquid mixed with a little bit of the Crème shop wash onto her face. Youra leans over the water for a moment as she exhales heavily. 

_What the fuck even happened?_

She remembers Bobby telling her to end it if she was going to walk away from him that easily, as if he hadn’t just smashed her self-esteem right on the glass part. Youra said fine, _again,_ and thus walked away, back to the legal office and sat there for almost an hour staring at a screen wanting to scream in anger.

She heard Jinhwan was looking for her and decided that she didn’t need a lecture from him today (since he was so good at giving her grief when she least wanted it) and left quickly, opting to work from the remote office, which was for staff who needed a quiet place to work who didn’t have their own office, for the last three hours of the day - or until she physically passed out from exhaustion.

Then she went to her car, stared at the steering wheel for about twenty minutes as the sad songs came on shuffle (curse you, Seventeen), then Hanbin knocked on her window and _luckily_ her sunglasses kept him from seeing that she had been bawling her eyes out the entire time.

At least she did think the sunglasses blocked it out, but it was unlikely because he still asked if she was okay. She did sit there for a while, so maybe it was that.

Youra had somehow taken up Hanbin’s offer to make her feel a bit better, since she briefly had told him her day was pretty shitty so far, and ended up halfway across Seoul, forgetting who she was within four of the strong drinks he kept handing her. Hanbin was the last one she remembered. Hanbin was the last _face_ she remembered.

It wouldn’t be Hanbin. Youra can be stupid but _dear god_ she’s not that stupid.

Not that stupid sober.

Hopefully not that stupid drunk. 

_Probably_ that stupid drunk.

_Holy shit it’s Hanbin._

Youra tries to tell herself it could be some random guy that she picked up off the street, but she _knew_ Hanbin well enough to know that he wouldn’t leave her to walk home on her own or with some random guy without his own DBS check. Drunk or not.

This is bad.

This is really, _really_ bad.

Sleeping with someone random was bad, lest it be for Youra and Bobby technically not being together. No, they’re not _seeing_ each other anymore and there’s no relationship ties after yesterday but that’s his _friend._ They were closer than she was to any of her friends.

It’s _Hanbin._

It was becoming a bit more obvious why people did the disappearing act after a one-night stand now. It was hard to disappear from her own place in the middle of the morning, already late for work, but at the very least if she left now then Hanbin might think she ditched him there because he was that drunk. He’d have to be beyond drunk to agree to whatever happened, much like her.

So that’s exactly what Youra does.

It kills her inside to grab everything, call for a cab and spend the ride doing her makeup to make herself look more pleasant. It was easier this way, but there would be more questions later.

Who is she kidding? A career in the legal field is made up of thinking on your feet. Youra could cover this all up and act like it never happened. For Bobby and Hanbin’s sake. Not for her own. She’d just have to hope Bobby and Hanbin would unknowingly follow the plan she’d devised, by not saying a word to each other or Bobby possibly wanting to get back with her at some point.

But what _really_ goes her way these days?

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Youra’s desk provides her a good cover for most of the day. She’d told her line manager, Yujin, that she had some off site errands to run and thank god Yujin believed her because most of the time Youra was reliable. Plus, she could stay late tonight and avoid any and all people on the way out.

Thinking on her feet was good going so far.

Luckily enough, Youra’s desk is also at the back of the legal office so she was able to check anyone who came in and see if they looking for her, before they noticed her. This is working so far, because the one close call she had was with one of the Winner group managers who was looking for Yujin, who would most certainly report her last known position to anyone who would want to know.

Maybe she was being paranoid, but anyone who hasn’t been friends with Junhoe or Jinhwan wouldn’t understand the position she was in. The pair of them were practically special forces trained, like snipers or something. Drug sniffing dogs. They could find her in the middle of a packed room or in an abandoned mine, should they need to. 

“Are you busy?” Haeun asks. She sits across the room from Youra usually, but since there’s some free desks at the back with the recent staff resignations, she’s chosen to sit beside Youra.

Haeun wasn’t in yesterday, or she would have been Youra’s shoulder to cry on. Call it even for when she broke up with her boyfriend a few months ago and came into work looking like death so Youra helped her out. Haeun was nice, she was a friend in Youra’s eyes even if they met at work and didn’t have that much in common to make them proper friends.

Youra moved to Seoul for this job opportunity so ditched everything she knew about her home life and instead ended up being friends with the people here. Since she did a lot of work with iKON, she ended up being friends with them instead of, say, Winner or Blackpink. She wanted some other friends too so ended up talking to Haeun, who was very different when they met.

Nowadays, Haeun was an idol lookalike with her straight, dark brown hair that was always perfect, and her equally perfect clothes that were most likely designer and gifted to her by one of the many boyfriends she had. Haeun didn’t date idols, she dated Chaebols. It was a complete 180 from when Haeun had short, curly hair and chubby pink cheeks with a kind of unfashionable look about her.

Seoul changes everyone, huh?

“Kinda,” Youra tells her. Haeun might have noticed that she staring at a blank screen for a few minutes earlier, which would ruin her alibi. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a governance meeting I’m meant to be in but I really need to finish this. I said I’d cover Yujin but I have a billion other things I promised her. Can you go for me? It’s the easiest thing I have to do. I won’t ask you for anything else over the next few weeks, I promise.”

Youra stares blankly at her for a few seconds. “I think you need to stop making promises to people.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a _not in a billion years_,” Youra tells her, “those meetings are hell. Everyone just updated you in what they’re doing and I would rather choke. Give me some paperwork or something else to do, I’d rather that.”

Haeun pouts a little, looking down to her phone to check the time. “I have a freedom of information request due today which I have no information for. I’ll go to the meeting if you want to spend an hour on the phone talking to Lim Chunhei about finance.”

“I would definitely rather do that.” Youra picks up her work handset and finds Chunhei’s number on the corporate phone book to dial. “I’ll call her right now and she’ll tell me everything I need, thank you.”

“You only like her because she thinks the sun shines out of your—”

“Go to your meeting, I’ll sort it out,” Youra tells her, glaring harshly.

_Oh,_ how easy talking to Chunhei is compared to talking to anyone else. Fortunately enough Youra used to organise every freedom of information request for YG but they had _technically_ promoted her to sorting out the legal queries once she had passed the relevant exams. She’d managed to have a pretty good relationship with most managers, associate directors and all the way to executive directors in the company.

Which is why, ten minutes later, she’s in Chunhei’s office against her will having tea and a _catch up on all the latest gossip that came from the corporate side of YG Entertainment. _

It was fine – surprisingly enough Youra was one of the only people to like Chunhei in this place, mostly because Chunhei saw Youra as a workplace daughter that would learn from her infinite pool of knowledge. Youra left that office knowing which manager had slept with who, and which person was likely to get fired because of a scandal that YG just couldn’t handle. Chunhei didn’t ask her anything about Bobby, which Youra was grateful for. 

The only problem with the whole thing was that her office was on the first floor. To get to it from the legal office on floor three, Youra would have to walk _straight_ past a practice room and one of the _many_ recording studios in this building.

If she didn’t know her luck already, then she wouldn’t have known that it was _fate_ for her to catch eyes with Junhoe as she was walking past just as he was coming out of a doorway down to a practice room.

If she hadn’t have run down the corridor and slammed Chunhei’s door shut then he would have caught her and she would have had to speak to him about _something._ It was Junhoe, he could talk for hours on end about absolutely anything and this would be no different. Especially since there was something he could question her about with that somehow adopted special forces training he had.

She could already picture the very first question he would ask – where the hell is Hanbin, and why does it say he’s at your place on SnapMaps?

If Youra knew that Hanbin was appearing at her place on SnapMaps, then Junhoe probably knew it and Bobby definitely know. Bobby had a weird stalker thing about him about checking every single location he could so he knew what his friends were doing. Yeah, it’s just as weird as the first time she saw him stalking everyone.

Fortunately, though, Youra manages to escape back to the second floor in the lift which has no one else in it. The second floor is as far as she gets, because she ends up spotting Yunhyeong (who conveniently had his back to her) and whilst making an attempt to run in the other direction, she catches Jinhwan staring right at her with a you’re a mess, Youra look the entire time.

Staying in that office was never easy enough, was it?

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

“You’ve been avoiding us all day,” Junhoe states, sitting on the edge of the table with Jinhwan beside him. They’d dragged Chanwoo with them to make her feel bad. “I thought I was being paranoid and then you tried to run from Yunhyeong too.”

“Of all people,” Jinhwan adds, “Yunhyeong is not someone you run away from unless you are ashamed, embarrassed or you really, really have a problem. So which one is it? Don’t try to lie to me.”

Youra tries to stifle an awkward laugh but all three of them are silent. At least they let her sit at your desk. No Bobby or Hanbin around here. That was definitely a benefit to having two of them as close friends and the two of them also having some sense about them. Usually you avoided iKON if there was a problem with one of them. “I haven’t felt well, I guess. You know, that cold that Mino had is passing around and has infected everyone in corporate.”

“I told you not to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!”

Jinhwan shakes his head at Youra, turning to Junhoe with a blank expression. “She’s lying. You see this? She’s actually trying to lie to us.”

“One hundred percent she is lying,” Junhoe continues on from him, turning to you with questioning eyes. “What happened yesterday that was so bad you left early and came in late today?”

Tell them the truth? As if.

Youra manages a slow shrug as she looks down to the ground. She could still play off the _I’m sick _card since she got some concealor on her lips and they look pale. She also didn’t have blush on. That’s it, Youra, play the I’m sick card until they leave you alone in fear of being sick themselves!

“Hanbin was looking for you too. I get ignoring us from time to time but what did Hanbin do? He literally just checks everyone is okay.” Jinhwan’s words make her feel worse than he probably intended.

She only ever had good things to say about Hanbin and she wasn’t acting like it now. Maybe she would have to talk to him. Who is she kidding, she has to see him eventually and they will have to have a more awkward discussion in front of everyone else.

But if he was looking for her then he must have questions. Which is great. She has to deal with that now, too.

So Youra tries to offer a smile which shows cracks of sadness that has been filling her up all day. Jinhwan frowns at her smile, and she knows then that he realises that it’s something _more _than just being ill. “I’m not avoiding Hanbin, or any of you. You haven’t done anything.”

“Well we must have because the only person who hasn’t mentioned your whereabouts today is Bobby, so you’re talking to him just fine,” Junhoe states bluntly. He rolls his eyes and looks over to Chanwoo, encouraging the youngest to join in like they wanted him to this whole time. “Tell her, she’s unfair.”

Junhoe has never been the best at telling emotions. He knew when it was obvious, but he couldn’t tell that the mention of Bobby’s name had her looking down to the ground which sorrowful eyes. Not on purpose. Out of habit. Nothing could ever break up the amazing, wonderful couple of Bobby and Youra. Yeah, checkmate.

“You fought?” Jinhwan asks. He narrows his eyes when she catches his gaze for her to answer. He almost seems satisfied when Youra nods a little. Deep down he must have known it was Bobby, she’s only ever got emotional over him and the Return of Superman. “That explains why he’s acting like someone spat in his breakfast, too.”

“I thought he might have said something to you guys. Pretty sure he told the entirety of his Snapchat how much of a bitch I was. Maybe it wasn’t clear.”

Jinhwan hums. “I honestly thought that was aimed at that critic who said his song wasn’t going anywhere.”

Junhoe, unknowing to what Youra and Jinhwan are actually talking about, takes a step forward and frowns at both of them. Chanwoo behind him must not have been listening to Junhoe because he offers you a sympathetic look, too. “Would you be _so_ kind as to tell Chanwoo and I what’s going on?”

Sometimes ignoring Koo Junhoe was the best medicine for anyone.

“He doesn’t tell us anything about you guys ever since… well, that whole thing about Junhoe catching you both in the recording studio,” Jinhwan tells her, shrugging similarly to how she had done earlier. He flashes Junhoe a _shut up_ glare and carries on. “So what happened then?”

Youra roll your eyes comically, trying to play it off as nothing. She thought it might have been easier that way. She could go home and listen to The Rose on repeat until she started listening to some heavy metal groups and forgot about everything that happened. “Nothing, really. It doesn’t matter.”

“It must be something,” Jinhwan comments, “if it really is personal, I get it. I don’t need you to tell me you’re having a kid or whatever but you seemed upset yesterday and the exact same today. If you fought, it must have been big. You guys never fight, so it must matter.”

Junhoe nods in agreement. He places a comforting hand on her shoulder, which does somehow make Youra feel a little better. “It matters enough for you to wish that you weren’t here. What happened?”

Youra had a strange relationship with both Jinhwan and Junhoe.

She met them both one day when she was waiting for their manager to sign a contract on some freedom of information request, and somehow got roped into their discussion about what picture of Junhoe looked better – him with or without the shirt.

She agreed that the one with the shirt was a better picture, but he would get more likes for the one without (and she also said _you’re the hot one in iKON, Junhoe, you’ve gotta keep the fans thirsting over something_). They ended up talking for ages and stayed friends since.

Jinhwan was like an older brother to her, always making sure she was okay but to no end annoying the shit out of her. He was probably just a brother in general for her, and she liked that she could rely on him for pretty much anything at this stage.

Junhoe and Youra, on the other hand, had a different dynamic. Junhoe did have a crush on her at first, which he admitted more than once, but eventually they grew to just have a platonic relationship that suited them both. A brother too, but more like a best friend she would gossip and stay up all night with.

She did feel bad about not telling them. It just felt easier to lie to them. Easier for her, at least. The less drama around this whole situation, the better.

“Nothing, I just told you guys—”

“Please?” Chanwoo asks, butting into the conversation. He pouts a little, probably much to the instructions Jinhwan and Junhoe had given him before they saw her. “We only want to help you out, and Bobby too.”

She hums, doubting they could really expect what she’s going to say. _Everyone _believed that one day Youra and Bobby would get married and that would be the end of it. “You really want to know so badly?”

She would only tell them _part _of the truth anyway. Just a small part of the big truth she has to hold back from everyone.

It’s a bit harder to keep the floodgates in place when all three of them nod, basically begging for the forbidden story of what happened yesterday. _Just that small part of it, Youra. Don’t forget that. _

“Bobby and I broke up,” Youra states, “yesterday. We broke up.”

The silence in the room isn’t broken by any of them. Jinhwan, Junhoe, and Chanwoo are staring at Youra like she had spoken Cantonese to them and they were trying to process whatever it sounded similar to in Korean so that they could work _something_ out. There was nothing foreign about this whole thing to Youra, though.

Junhoe is the first to speak. Well - he doesn’t speak. He laughs it all out and expects the others to join in with him as well. When they don’t, he coughs to cover his laugh and stops altogether. He looks Youra dead in the eye with some kind of fear “You’re, _uh_, joking right?”

Youra shakes her head, lost for any other words to say to him.

This would all be one big _fucking _joke. She wished it was. She wished she just argued back with Bobby and they made up yesterday and now they were fine. She wished she would have said no to Hanbin and instead went home and ate pizza as she cried.

She wished this _all_ was a joke.

But Youra is thankful for the silence that surrounds her once more. She didn’t exactly want the sympathy stares but she knew they would come, mostly because she was friends with everyone but Junhoe and Jinhwan because of Bobby (who she needed to stop referring to as her _boyfriend_ since he _wasn’t_). She would have preferred to tell them in a better way, or Bobby do it himself. At least now she didn’t have to explain that the _whole_ reason she felt a thousand times worse was because of Hanbin being in her bed this morning.

“_Shit_,” Jinhwan says softly, the only one who really does know what to say.

He sums up this entire situation pretty well for Youra with one word.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

It’s been three days since, _you know_.

Surprisingly, things had gone Youra’s way. Only to the degree that Hanbin hadn’t messaged her and neither had Bobby, not as far as work itself and every other aspect of her life. She had a pile of work to go through and check no one was violating any laws with their employee contracts, her tea had gone cold and she’d found a used condom in her bin earlier and felt mortified.

At least the two of them had been safe!

It was the only silver lining ever coming out of anything that day.

Well, maybe there was the silver lining of… _no_, forget it, there was no other silver lining.

Fortunately enough, she’d enjoyed the day at home because Yujin decided the legal office was too stressful. Builders were replacing the windows and it was hard to work, so she could now do it on her couch at home. It would have usually been her bed but she couldn’t even sleep there at the moment, let alone _work_ there.

Every time Youra looked at the bed, she was transported into some other reality. The first of which she never spoke to Hanbin and she just cried it out and this never happened. The second, and more likely, is that Hanbin finally fronts her and Bobby finds out and she has to move to another country because she owes both of them more than an apology. But mostly Bobby.

As much as she tries to convince herself that there is no _way_ she would have slept with him, that it was a mistake and she just fell asleep naked beside him, there’s no _fucking way_. It’s impossible. Especially now she had cold, hard evidence in her bin. So she was facing a situation she had no idea how to deal with.

And her phone is ringing, not that she heard it over her headphones which played angry rock music at full blast so she heard that over every single thought she had.

It’s rang three times now.

Thankfully Youra notices when skipping between songs, though when she turns over her phone she wishes she never _did_ notice. A sigh and answer button later, she’s speaking to the very last person she wanted to talk to in all of this.

But also the one she wanted to talk to the most because he always knew what to say to her when she was down and he would have been the perfect person to sit beside and hug all day.

“Hi,” she greets shyly, not sure how else to approach the situation. She was _going _to ask if he was okay but decides not to.

“I have some stuff to give to you,” Bobby says. His lack of a greeting isn’t surprising, it would take a few days, maybe a week or two, for him to cool down from everything and be back to the normal Bobby that she knew and loved so dearly. “It’s at your door. I’m not staying.”

“I’ll be there in—”

He hangs up before she can answer him.

Well, the conversation wasn’t as bad as it could have been she guesses. The only way it could have been worse is if he did actually want to talk to her - but at least with Bobby acting like this the plan for Youra was simple. He didn’t want to talk to her, she couldn’t tell him anything. She didn’t _have _to tell him anything rather.

Discarding her work and headphones, Youra ends up at her door looking down at a bag of clothes and some other bits she had left in Bobby’s room. He did the same thing last time, so she doesn’t even bother looking through the bag and leaves it in the hallway of her apartment to check when she has it in her.

She was still in a rough place, and she still had no idea what to do. Would anyone? God she wishes she could tell Junhoe because he would tell her straight how to go forward with the situation. She wishes he wasn’t friends with Bobby and had no idea who he was so she could bitch and moan all she wanted.

Perhaps she should go on some anonymous chat and share her story. _Yes. _Reddit, here comes Youra!

Last time this happened, Bobby had filled the bag with things of his too. Just to make her feel bad, she thinks. She would see his stuff and have to talk to him and when she called him back she would tell him she felt bad and wanted to sort stuff out. It was the most Bobby-like thing Bobby could have done. Make her apologise, just like before, and sort everything out without any need of an apology to him.

She doesn’t get much chance to ponder over the true meaning of what he’s given her because her phone is ringing again. Youra must have been popular today. Fortunately enough it’s not another downer on her mood, it’s Haeun. She found out about Youra and Bobby’s break up just after Jinhwan, Junhoe, and Chanwoo, and had been there to support her when she got upset and broke down a matter of seconds after the three left the room.

Haeun had helped Youra out just by being a shoulder to cry on, which lead to Youra considering telling Haeun everything (since Haeun had probably heard worse stories from her chaebol boyfriends) over the bottle of rosé she picked up on the way home last night. Youra decided not to, as nice as having a secret shared with another person would be, it wasn’t right for her to know. Not until Youra had spoken to Hanbin.

Which was going to be soon, by the way things had been heading.

“Take a year to answer, why don’t you,” Haeun says, sighing after she had greeted her. Youra knows she’ll continue so she doesn’t answer her yet. “I know Yujin let you work from home and to be honest, it annoyed me. That’s why I’m ringing you, to annoy you back. I have Hanbin here and he wants to speak to you.”

Youra frowns. She didn’t expect him _this _soon. God, Hanbin, give it a week so Youra can get her head back together and pick up the pieces of this mess. “He has my number.”

“Oh, I know he does,” she states. Youra can almost see her smug smile through the phone.

“Then why are you telling me he’s looking for me? He hasn’t tried to call or text me?”

Haeun hums, and in the background Youra thinks that she can hear a door being shut. “He just came up here looking for you and I remembered that yesterday you were looking at something about him so I was wondering what was going on between the two of you. ”

Youra almost shits a brick. Is it that obvious? She was only looking up something on her phone about Hanbin because someone on Naver said he looked down the past couple days. She wanted to check for herself. “Nothing is going on between us two.”

“Shall I tell him your address?” Haeun presses.

“Seriously Haeun, nothing has gone on,” Youra tells her. It felt bad lying to her; Youra found it hard to imagine what it would be like with someone else. Junhoe and Jinhwan would not make this easy, she would likely cave at the earliest opportunity. “He’s close to Bobby and he’s probably said something, you know. Bobby likes to bitch about everything and Hanbin is being a good leader and sorting him out if he’s acting out. If he thought I was at work then it’s easier to talk face to face right?”

That was a good enough reason.

As good as _I slept with your best friend because we were drunk_.

Fuck this mess. She wanted a holiday to the Bahamas with drinks included. She wanted to lay in the sand and pretend none of this mattered to her anymore.

“Are you sure?” Haeun asks her.

Youra rolls her eyes as she picks up her juice. “Hanbin is your bias in ikon, I know you’re jealous he wants to talk to me instead—”

“It’s Yunhyeong!” Haeun exclaims, her accent becoming a little more prominent with her expression. What is it with people cutting Youra off today? Maybe she deserves it. _Probably_ deserves it. “Can you not just text him and check everything is okay? Would he really have tried to find you just to get your side of the story on all of this?”

“Well, it kind of is his job as their leader I guess. So maybe. I don’t know.”

“Just text him and sort something out or I’ll get you some more work to do this weekend,” Haeun tells her, “I can get Yujin on my side too and make sure she thinks you’re not working to capacity. Then you’ll have Bobby and Yujin to deal with!”

Talking to Hanbin isn’t going to wait any longer, then.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

“Do you want some coffee?”

Youra follows Hanbin’s question with a confused glance. He’s noticed the mug in her hands already, so she’s not entirely sure what he’s asking her now. He looks a little lost, maybe more lost than she is. Maybe she’s telling herself that so that she feels a little better. _Probably_.

“I mean, uh…” Hanbin catches the mug, _again_, smiling awkwardly as he sits down on the seat opposite to her. He does look a little under the weather. Unstyled hair, massively oversized green hoodie and that _I haven’t slept more than a few hours this week _vibe. “I’m sorry. I don’t really know what to say.”

Deciding to take away from the seriousness of what’s going on, Youra decides to approach the topic from a different end. “I guess I should say thank you for making sure I didn’t get killed or sold into the black market. Knew I could count on you.”

“Really?” Hanbin doesn’t find anything funny about her dry humour. He stares at Youra, almost sadly, lips turned down with his arms pressed against the table. “This is serious.”

“I know it’s serious, Hanbin,” Youra states. She looks over to the window and bites down her back teeth in an attempt not to roll her eyes at him. She shouldn’t be so insensitive, but she was _not _in the mood to carry on being so depressed about everything that’s happened. “You said you didn’t know what to say. So I said something. What else do you want me to do? Make things even more awkward?”

Realistically, Youra and Hanbin are in a very similar situation. Except, maybe Bobby doesn’t hate him and his entire being already because of a stupid argument. She can’t even remember what started that argument, which was annoying because she wouldn’t even be able to make an apology for all of this.

Hanbin is his friend, and they’re pretty close. Youra’s not sure exactly how it works for guys but if Haeun had done what Hanbin did to Bobby, then Youra would be pretty mad and Haeun’s not even her _best_ friend. So she’s not sure how Hanbin is so calm. Maybe he hasn’t pieced together everything, or he’s ignoring it out of fear for his own sanity.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Hanbin crosses his arms over his chest as he leans back into the chair. He watches Youra for a moment, as though he is trying to assess the situation for himself. She looks a little better due because of the foundation on her face. Make up hides _everything _from prying eyes. “Are you okay?”

Youra hums, softening her expression a little. She had a million different voices in her head screaming at her for everything she was doing right and wrong. _He’s your ally in this, Youra – use him! _She takes a sip from her mug before answering. “I guess. Things have been better but that’s just what it’s like these days.”

“Junhoe said you were avoiding him,” Hanbin says. He sighs at his own statement, but finds some humour in it since she had complained to anyone who would listen about how persistent Junhoe could be sometimes. He never did get the message, but somehow Youra was okay with that. “I told him to leave you alone for a while. I hope that’s okay. I thought it might be a bit better if you didn’t have Junhoe pestering you about what’s the latest update to your situation.”

“It helps me out a lot,” Youra answers with the beginnings of a smile, “thank you.”

“I haven’t said anything to Bobby.”

“Me neither,” Youra says. Judging by the look Hanbin gives her, he’s not entirely sure _how_ to tell Bobby anyway. _Youra_ couldn’t think of any way to tell him. “I don’t really know what to say to him. He called me yesterday but didn’t exactly give me a chance to speak to him, just wanted me to know he left some stuff at more door. He’s still pissed.”

Hanbin hums, looking down to his phone. From what she can see from a little peek at his screen, there’s a message from Bobby already. Hanbin locks his phone and pushes it to the side. “I guess it’s a little easier for you to avoid him when he’s avoiding you too.”

“Yeah. I suppose it’s hard for you not to tell him.”

“I wouldn’t have said anything to him without talking to you first.” Hanbin pushes his hair back gently, fumbling with the ends of his sleeves for a moment as it goes silent. He looks down when she meets his gaze, almost scared to look her in the eyes. “It was an accident, right?”

Youra raises her eyebrow. “In what way?”

“Like, you don’t have feelings towards me? You never wanted this to actually happen?”

“Hanbin, I was really drunk and so were you,” she states. She can’t help but feel bad, brushing off his questions so easily because he’s still her friend and she does care about him. It’s almost impossible not to care about him, but she still cared about Bobby now. He was part of her family and Hanbin was… she saw Hanbin the least of everyone in iKON. They were friends but not like she was with anyone else. It honestly felt like Hanbin avoided her at times. “It was a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened. But it did and we have to live with it. I can’t remember anything so I haven’t really been thinking about it too much. Bobby and I aren’t even together anymore, so it doesn’t have to be brought up to him. It would cause problems between the two of you and I don’t want that to happen.”

Maybe _this_ was on her mind a bit more than she was suggesting to everyone, even herself.

Hanbin shifts uncomfortably in his seat as he scrambles to look anywhere _but _at her. “So you’re saying we don’t tell anybody and act like you just cried in my company for the whole night?”

“I’m saying we just don’t say anything to anyone. You’re not lying if you don’t say anything, and no one has asked about it so…”

“Bobby already asked me why I was at yours in the morning,” Hanbin states. He exhales heavily before leaning towards Youra, now daring to keep eye contact for all that it’s worth. “I told him you were upset and had a headache so I brought you some medicine for it. He was pissed at me for _just_ doing that, he thinks I dropped it of to you and left. How do you think he’s going to react if he finds out that I fucking _slept_ with you?”

“Can you not say that out loud?”

Hanbin scoffs loudly. Youra’s sure some other people are listening, so she’s praying no one recognises his _easily recognisable_ face. “It happened, we can’t just act like it didn’t.”

“No one other than you and I know it did, so let’s keep it that way, alright?” Youra shakes her head, picking up her phone and purse from the table then standing up abruptly. She didn’t want to have this conversation at all, yet alone in _public_. “I’m going to be late, so I’ll see you around. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Wait... Wait.”

“What?” Youra asks.

Hanbin bites down on his lips for a moment before meeting her gaze again. He looks a little saddened, though she’s not exactly surprised. Youra would be too, and she is because of how much she cares about Bobby - argument or not she still loved his dumb, annoying ass as much as she did before this happened. He’d been her boyfriend for how many years now? As selfish as it sounds to some, it’s easier for him not to lose one of his closest friends over this. No way. Not when they work together.

So when Hanbin agrees finally, it’s like a weight lifted off of Youra’s shoulders. _For now._ “I won’t tell anyone about what happened. I won’t.”

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Youra finds herself hovering outside the practice room where six of the members of iKON are messing about inside. She watches through the window, making sure she isn’t spotted by anyone in particular whilst she ponders over the memories she has of everything being _fine_.

A while ago, she would have been able to walk in there and join in whatever they were doing and act just as stupid. She’d sit with Bobby and share some food with him, they’d make plans for the evening and she would be stuck with Junhoe until he decided she could leave again.

Now she just has to watch from the outside, observing a room full of people who mostly looked comfortable.

Bobby and Hanbin were the only people who looked out of place. Donghyuk was _trying _to teach Yunhyeong and Junhoe something, the three watching themselves in the mirror as they repeated the same piece of choreo over and over. Chanwoo was talking to Hanbin about something on his phone which Hanbin didn’t seem all that excited about.

And Bobby? He was… acting all depressed sitting in the corner on his own.

He had been like that for a while, reading through something that Youra couldn’t quite see. She tries to get a better look but his screen is titled at _just _the right angle that it’s invisible to her. All she knows is that something is making him act like someone had spat in his breakfast every day since Jinhwan first said that. It was a pretty good expression.

It wasn’t like Youra _didn’t _want to talk to Bobby. She thought of how she could pull him to the said and say to him, _look, I’m sorry for everything that has happened_, and each time she started a new conversation in her head with him, it always ended up _why did you call Hanbin to help you_. Then she had to lie to Bobby and she had never done that to him before.

They just _didn’t. _As annoying as it sounds, the two of them really were that perfect couple that didn’t find reasons to argue. They had their differences sometimes but they were adults and could put them aside. They argued over Bobby’s attitude problems and sorted it (previously) quickly because Youra was as forgiving as one of the religious elders. They didn’t need to lie to each other.

Youra considers walking in and just acting like nothing ever happened, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She has a hollow feeling in her heart as she backs away from the door, her chest heavy as she tries to tell herself that walking away from them was the best thing to do.

Too much water under the bridge.

And too much water under the bridge will flood the bridge and cause mayhem that she isn’t able to deal with.

She thinks she’s in the clear, but when she’s a few steps away from the door, still facing the window in case anyone should think to look if someone is spying on them, Youra feels a hand on her back to stop her from moving any further.

“No.” Youra turns around with wide eyes, surprised but grateful to have Jinhwan stopping her rather than one of their managers. He has a bottle of water in his hands, and an unamused look on his face. “You want to join us, so don’t walk away.”

Youra shakes her head rapidly, stuttering over how she can avoid Jinhwan forcing her inside. “I don’t really think that’s a good idea, I… I mean, it’s just awkward now and not worth the problems it will cause.”

Jinhwan only stares at her, unbothered.

“Don’t make me go in there,” Youra pleads, turning to him with her hands clasped together. She’s prepared to beg on her knees if she has. “Kim Jinhwan, if there is any kindness left in your heart, please let me leave without having to go in there.”

“You talk about us like we are vultures. We’re your friends.”

“Bobby’s friends,” Youra corrects, “and it’s the wolves den in there. I don’t need to talk to you guys, I just wanted to check you were okay, which you are, so if you don’t mind I will–”

Jinhwan has no time for her, choosing to push past her and open the door to the practice room as he drags her by her wrist behind him. He smiles, letting go of her arm when she’s in the doorway and _everyone_, bar Bobby, is looking at her.

No, Bobby is looking elsewhere. Right at _Hanbin_.

And Hanbin looks at her with the widest eyes she’s seen for a while. Like he’s pleased to see her. _Relieved _to see her. Like a puppy that just found his owner that came home from work. He’s still staring at her when Chanwoo carries on talking and Jinhwan shoves the bottle of water in his lap.

Youra smiles, though it looks more forced than she planned for it to be. She pulls on the hem of her jumper as she looks from Hanbin, over to Bobby. He’s now watching her but he doesn’t look sad anymore. He looks… like he’s thinking long and hard about what he’s just seen.

“Need something?” Junhoe asks, stopping what he’s doing just as Yunhyeong was about to finish part of the dance with him. Yunhyeong leaves Junhoe with a glare. “I thought you said you were gonna be out of the office this week.”

Donghyuk agrees with him. “When I emailed you, it said you didn’t have access to emails.”

“Why’d you email her?” Jinhwan asks.

“There was this part of the contract I thought I violated,” Donghyuk admits to them, though he doesn’t appear to bothered. “I wanted Youra to check it and I wanted to reply with thanks. So, thanks Youra. Glad they can’t kick me out of this place yet.”

Junhoe looks between the two with his brows furrowed. “You guys talk by email?”

“I’ve emailed you before,” Youra tells him. She feels a little less uncomfortable now that everyone is getting on with other things and there’s no awkward silence. She can still feel Hanbin and Bobby’s eyes on her. “You just don’t reply to me, Junhoe.”

He shrugs, going back to his dance practice with Yunhyeong and Donghyuk. It was a bit disappointing that the _one _time she needed Junhoe to actually talk, he wasn’t going to. She’s not sure where to go or who to talk to, so she opts for heading to Chanwoo, Hanbin and Jinhwan since she could rely on Jinhwan to talk to her, if not Chanwoo.

She sits beside Jinhwan, kicking her legs out in front of her as the three of them look to her for conversation. “I came here because I can still hear the builders from the office and it’s going to kill me if I stay in there any longer.”

“Do you want to use my studio?” Hanbin asks, not missing a heartbeat to offer her an alternative. He doesn’t take his eyes off her for a moment, even when she looks away from him and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s soundproof, so there’s that.”

Jinhwan looks between the two of them suspiciously. “Since when do you let anyone use _your _studio?”

“He’s just being nice,” Youra covers, shooting a glare in Jinhwan’s direction. He wasn’t _ever _going to give her a break, was he?

“Do you want to?” Hanbin asks, ignoring the break from Jinhwan and Youra. He’s look interest in Chanwoo’s conversation but the youngest seems to be picking up on Jinhwan’s talents for being _overly _suspicious. The relationship at play is much more amusing that Cyberpunk.

“Nah, thanks though,” Youra answers. She notices Hanbin looks a little deflated so rushes to mend _some _of his ego. She knew what it was like to have that glass of self-esteem smashed _all _too well. “I’ve never been to your studio so I don’t know where it is, anyway.”

Hanbin is emotionless for a moment before the cogs start turning in his head and he seems to have the brilliant idea of offering a suggestion to her. “I can show you?”

It seemed like déjà vu, but that was because her and Bobby had pretty much the exact same question when Bobby would try to flirt with her but did it in a more caring way. He said she could use _his _studio to do some work since one of the other members of staff at the time would never shut up about their kids. It was strange having the exact same thing come out of Hanbin’s mouth.

Apparently Bobby felt the same way.

She knew he was watching them, likely listening to their conversation as well, and it’s clear that he had the exact same thought when he stands up and walks out of their quicker than anyone can ask him where he’s going. Hanbin might have to tone it down if this was going to be a smooth break up period.

Wait, was Hanbin flirting with her the same way Bobby did?

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

It takes a while for Youra to see one of the members of iKON again. Give or take a few days, but for her that _is _a while. It’s not by choice, really, because Junhoe had her cornered in her office with a less than happy look on his face which made her worry that _someone_ had said _something_.

But Youra could trust Hanbin, right?

_Right__?_

“Talk to him,” Junhoe tries to reason. He rolls his eyes as he sits on the corner of her desk with despair coursing through him. She’d not seen Junhoe like this since he shared a room with someone. “It’s hell working with him. One word and he gets mad at everyone. Please just talk to him.”

“You and I both know that’s not a good idea.”

Junhoe shakes his head at Youra. “No, it is. Trust me. You _need _to speak with him.”

“Bobby literally hates me. He avoids me and it’s not because he’s nervous, it’s because he sees red every time he looks my way. I don’t have any reason to see him ever again! I don’t particularly want to, either. Come on, Junhoe, be realistic about this.”

Okay, part of Youra _did_ want to see Bobby properly. She’d seen him a few times in the corridors after being in the practice room and he’d looked away from her quicker than she could clock him properly, but Youra wanted to sit down with him and check he was definitely okay. That’s what she was supposed to do, right?

She never really did think her and Bobby would break up for good, even though everything that happened after did actually... happen. She was still on the end of the stick that denying everything is better than accepting it.

“I’m not talking about Bobby,” Junhoe says, frowning. He cocks his head to the side slightly. “Bobby seems pissed off too, but Hanbin is a nightmare. No one can talk him out of whatever mood he’s in now, so please can you do it? Just talk to him and see what’s wrong so he doesn’t give us hell every day.”

_Of course__ it would be Hanbin._

_“_What do you mean, _Hanbin_?” Youra questions.

Junhoe sighs, obviously frustrated. He doesn’t know anything right? _Here comes the paranoia._ It was great working here. Youra was going to have to work for SM Entertainment or even worse, JYP. Well, there was benefits to both. She could always pursue one of the members of Day6. Brian was pretty cute. _Youra, stop thinking of other guys!_ She needed to get a grip. “No one can get him to be nice. He’s acting like a kid right now. Honestly? You’d think he broke up with you. Not Bobby.”

“But why should _I_ speak to him? We’re not that close. He’s closer to Bobby than I am to you. Wouldn’t it make sense to ask Bobby instead of me?”

“Because you’re good at making people see sense in things, right?” Junhoe suggests, “plus I know you went to get lunch together last week. It’s like, since then he’s wanted everyone around him to die or something. And every time I catch him on his phone during breaks he’s hovering over your contact like a little bitch. Please just talk to him. He obviously wants to talk to you. The _only _time he’s been pleasant with anyone was when you shot him down about using his studio.”

“We’re not that close, I just wanted to say thanks for him for sorting me out some meds when I was sick and to tell him, as leader of iKON, that Bobby and I broke up,” Youra says softly, thankful she thought of a cover story beforehand. She _knew _this day would come. Junhoe offers her an apologetic look for a brief moment, though she knows it will fade soon enough. “Bobby is mad at me, and Hanbin is mad because of that. I’ve basically caused a rift in your group and Hanbin is trying to fix it. That’s it. As soon as Bobby gets off his high horse here, we can sort things out and everything will be normal.”

Junhoe rolls his eyes. “God, what did he even say to you that was _that_ bad you don’t want to see him?”

“What? No, I don’t care if I see him or not, he’s avoiding me like the plague because of what he said to me. He fucked up and can’t accept it. I… this whole dating thing was a mistake, you know? Now it’s causing problems between us all.”

“I didn’t mean it like that…” Junhoe pulls the chair from Haeun’s empty desk and sits down gently. He takes Youra’s hand in his and smiles as best he can, in the least condescending way Junhoe could manage. He still looks pretty condescending but you’ll take it. “Listen, there’s no problems between us all. We’re all close still regardless of your situation with Bobby. From the way he’s acting we all just guessed that you pissed him off.”

Youra shakes her head. She can feel her eyes becoming a little watery. She hadn’t _yet _cried since she was in her car and she was trying her best not to cry now. She manages to hold it together on the premise that Junhoe didn’t know what to do when people cried around him. “He told me that the only reason I do so well here is because of him, and people want to impress him so are nice to me. He doesn’t realise that I work my ass off here to do well. People treat me _worse_ because of him. It hurt me, you know?”

“Damn, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine, I don’t want you to apologise. I just think that maybe I should go back to Bobby and apologise because he’s never going to apologise to me. I just want to make this whole situation better because I want to grab lunch with you guys and hang out but it’s impossible like this. Plus, if I try to sort things with Hanbin for you guys it practically ruins everything for Bobby and I. He was annoyed at Hanbin for coming to mine in the morning, he was annoyed Hanbin is still actively talking to me, I don’t want him to get even more annoyed because… I just don’t know, Jun-ah. I don’t know what to do with all of this.”

“What if you focus on something else? We can still get lunch and hang out. That doesn’t have to change, you know?” Junhoe tells her. Somehow he manages to look like a genuine friend in all of this. “You and Bobby will work things out eventually. Don’t worry about it for now. He barricades himself in the studio for most of the day and that’s fine. It will all be fine in the end, and you have all of us to complain to at the end of the day. We all hate Bobby as much as you do for being an asshole to you.”

Youra hums, sighing contently at his words. They make her feel a little better, like she has some others on her side. _For now_. She’s not sure how any of them will feel if they find out what really happened that night and also that she lied to them this entire time.

But Junhoe is right, _right__?_ Everything will be fine eventually. “I’ll speak to Hanbin for you, but I can’t promise that it will sort anything out for you.”

“I think it will,” Junhoe says. There’s a look in his eyes she doesn’t quite understand. “I don’t think you realise how much of an impact you have on Hanbin.”

Youra’s heart races at the comment, and you’re sure Junhoe realises. She tries to not react to his statement too much, but someone else bringing up her and Hanbin is enough to make her want to throw up. Out of nerves, not because of him! She should adopt a new mindset. “What do you mean by that?”

“I just mean he wants to get closer to you. He said to me once that he never knew what to say to you and it made things between you kinda awkward. I think he realises that you’re _friends_ with everyone else and he’s kind of left out. If you make an effort, it will be worthwhile, you know?”

_Youra would probably pick Hanbin as the person she was least closest to in iKON._

She takes a moment to think through Junhoe’s words, the pure idea of _not_ being close to Hanbin is running through her mind is causing her problems, considering she had seen a lot more of him than anyone else in the group (at least, drunk you did). She can’t ponder on it for too long, as she’s distracted by the very boy’s voice echoing through the room, taking both Youra and Junhoe’s attention.

_Now_ she has to explain to Junhoe why, if she’s not _that_ close to Hanbin, he’s at the office door right now. Hanbin and Junhoe really fuck up some shit for her.

“Am I interrupting?” Hanbin asks. He looks tired, stressed at the very least, and definitely like he’s been struggling to sleep still. Bobby looked the exact same whilst they were producing the new album. “I can go if you’re busy, it’s not important.”

Junhoe jumps to his feet with a larger than life grin on his lips. _Thank god it’s not Jinhwan, who may have spent a little longer thinking about __why __Hanbin was actually here_. “No, we’re done. You stay here and talk. I’m going to get some food.”

“But I want food,” Youra mumbles softly.

Luckily Junhoe is the only one who catches Youra’s words and shoots her a glare, scurrying off before she can ditch Hanbin for lunch and go with him. _No,_ Youra is stuck here to listen to Hanbin who clearly wants to talk to her but she has no idea what about because the _most_ attention he’s given her since she rejected his flirting (can she call it that?) is looking awkwardly away from her when she caught his eye at lunch. He was leaving, Youra was entering, there was no reason to talk there. At least she didn’t think there was.

“If you were busy, I can go,” Hanbin repeats, standing where Junhoe had previously been. Her computer screen is open with some pages she was redacting but she’d long ago given up on that. “I just… need to talk to someone.”

Youra tries to act surprised. “What about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well it must be something,” Youra says. She feels bad for him, but she knew she couldn’t help all that much. She didn’t know that much about him about him aside from what Bobby had told her. But she guesses that’s the problem here._Bobby_. “What can’t you talk to Jinhwan or even Yunhyeong about?”

Hanbin sighs. “You know exactly what it is.”

_“__Oh_.”

“I can’t talk to Bobby because I’m worried that I’ll tell him and we fuck up everything you know?” Hanbin says. He sits down on the chair Junhoe never put back and throws his fingers back through his hair, sighing once more. “It’s not just about him and I being friends, it’s about you and it’s about this group and… there’s more to it than you and I sleeping together. There’s too many feelings involved here.”

“Do you want me to tell him?” Youra asks.

Hanbin looks up to her with wide eyes. He’s as fearful as she as last week - perhaps his feelings are a week behind and he’ll get to where she is soon. Youra isn’t sure. Do guys feel the same way? Does he regret things as much as she did? There were so many questions she wouldn’t dare to ask him, _ever_. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what did you mean?” she questions, crossing her arms over her chest. “It happened and there’s nothing either of us can change. Bobby will find out eventually and one of us will have to take the blame and… I care about you all too much to say it’s your fault. I took advantage of you being there for me. I used you to get back at Bobby. You just happened to be the person I used.”

“That’s how you feel about it?”

Youra shakes her head. “Honestly, Hanbin, I can’t even remember my fourth drink that night. I have no idea what happened between us. But if Bobby was to ever find out, that’s what happened. Because I imagine that’s what went through my head.”

“But it’s not true.”

“How do you know that?” Hanbin meets her eyes but immediately looks away. Honestly, she’s confused by what he wants her to say. It feels like he _wants_ to admit _something_ but he doesn’t know how to. Honestly, she’s not sure what to think here. “Listen, neither of us know what or how or _why_ everything happened, so why are you worried what I have to say? I’m telling you why I _think_ it happened, and that’s the most appropriate right now.”

Hanbin looks blankly at the floor for a moment. Though Youra watches him carefully, he’s still so hard to read. He’s not like Bobby who anyone can practically learn everything about in a matter of seconds. He’s not like Junhoe who will just tell someone how he feels and get it over with. Hanbin keeps it all in and acts like there’s not a care in the world. It’s scary not to know how he feels. It’s scary not to know why he’s staring at the ground like _that._

“You don’t think I played a part in it at all?” Hanbin asks.

She raises a brow. “Why would you?”

“I’m not sure,” Hanbin answers. He takes a moment to glance over at her screen before looking over to the door. “You look busy so, I’m going to go now. I’ll talk to you later or something.”

“You’re not leaving, Hanbin.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not done here,” Youra tell him. He looks ready to sprint out of here but she places a hand on his shoulder and makes sure to show him that she doesn’t want him to leave yet, with the tips of her fingers and part of her nail digging into him a little. She’s pretty sure he’s going to sprint out of here, anyway. “Why would you have a part in everything? You’re Bobby’s friend, you don’t have a problem with him, so why would that have been your fault?”

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Youra did her _very _best to avoid the situation at hand. She spent her time strategically planning every minute of her daily schedule to not interfere with anyone else, organising all meetings as far away from the idol side of YG Entertainment.

She thought she was going to get away with it as well. For the past week and a half she had avoided all unwanted contact with people. She saw Junhoe, Jinhwan, occasionally some other people, but that was all on her terms and when _she _wanted to. No surprise visits that had her tripping over her own words.

That was until _now_.

“Have you gone through the stuff I go back to you?” Bobby asks, not bothering to look at Youra. He’s looking down at the bottle of juice he has in his hand, reading the packaging. It’s not until a few seconds pass without an answer that he looks up to her. “You know, since… I might have left something of mine in there.”

Youra was doing better now she had some control over everything. She was coming to terms with the fact she lost her boyfriend and that she had a massive secret she shared with his best friend. She found some comfort in talking to Hanbin now and then, mostly on snapchat when he would comment on her story, or alike on Instagram.

Bobby, on the other hand, didn’t look so good.

He seemed to be at the same place she and Hanbin were before. The not sleeping, feeling like the world was against you, hating everything around you. He looked tired, he was wearing some old clothes that she recalled he kept in his drawer since he never wore them anyway. Everything down to his aura was off.

If she was wiser, she may have realised that he still loved her and was starting to feel the full effect of their breakup.

“Not yet. I’ve been working a lot and helping out Youngsook out when I have some spare time.”

Bobby hums, leaning against the counter as his gaze shifts around the room. Was he nervous? She hadn’t seen him like this in a while. “Youngsook is still refusing to go to a nursing home?”

“Still thinks she can do everything herself, yeah,” Youra confirms.

“Does she ask about me?” Bobby asks her this time. He places the bottle down on the side as he searches for some change in his pocket. Eventually he pulls out a crumpled bill. “She did think I was her son, after all.”

Youra chuckles a little at his words, but shakes her head. “She isn’t in the best place. One of my neighbours is having to sit with her during the day now. Luckily Youngsook is still alright having kids around. It’s a shame. She really isn’t helping herself.”

“People don’t know when to quit, especially when what they’ve got something good going.”

Bobby and Youra had ended up next to each other at the café downstairs, completely by chance. Youra was talking to one of the recording artists about copyright restrictions and decided she wanted some coffee but missed that the person in front of her was Bobby and by the time she realised it was him, she wasn’t able to make a run for it.

She thought it would be fine at first. He didn’t notice it was her until one of the trainees waved at Youra, and Bobby caught on so checked who was behind him. They only looked at each other at first, but then the queue was taking longer than expected (the cash register had died on them, apparently) and Bobby saw there was a need for conversation.

It was strange to think they used to talk to each other for hours on end about absolutely anything.

“How have you been?” Youra asks, genuinely.

“Alright,” Bobby answers after a moment or two. He looks as if he’s unsure to ask it back. He may be afraid of the answer, or he doesn’t want to know. “Things have been busy, so I guess that’s been good.”

Youra hums in agreement. “Junhoe said he hasn’t left the practice room for a while. I think he’s gonna leave the country at this point, he just keeps complaining to me.”

“Yeah, but that’s just what it’s like when you have a comeback.”

Bobby avoids bringing up what _he _was like when they came back with _Love Scenario_. Youra only saw him once every few days and that was when she slept in his recording studio, waiting on him to wake her up in the morning and apologise for being a shitty boyfriend.

“Especially since you’ve got to top Love Scenario, right?” Youra wonders how stressed Hanbin must be considering he was putting together the songs, too. She should probably check on him at some point. “Gonna be hard to do that.”

Bobby agrees with a nod, but not much else. The line is moving now so he doesn’t bother to talk to her anymore, opting to pay for his drunk and make a break for it without even a goodbye for her. She wonders if that was it then.

That was the end of Bobby and Youra for good.

She knows it’s awkward, but when a one night stand treats you better than your boyfriend – sorry, _ex-boyfriend _– then there is definitely a problem. It was like getting blood from a stone with him, and it’s never been like that before.

Youra might just be accepting the fact that the end of them was here. Nothing she could do to change that, except maybe waiting. Did it change the fact that she loved him? No. Did it mean if he asked, she wouldn’t take him back? No. Did it mean that she was trying to think on how she could start to remake her life without any traces of Bobby in it?

Obviously, yeah.

Youra pays for her coffee with a smile, setting it down on one of the free tables so she could sort out her card in her purse. She organises all of her cards in her purse so that they’re tidier than they were before, then puts her purse back into her bag so she could take her coffee and phone upstairs. She stops when she picks up her phone and notices a message on her screen.

** _Hanbin: _ ** _I know you said you’re busy, but do you want to watch a movie with me?_

** _Hanbin: _ ** _I’m alone in the studio and really wanted to watch a pirated copy of A Simple Favour_

** _Hanbin: _ ** _You get some free pizza if you come, too_

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

“He’s just really, _really_ frustrating,” Youra’s voice sounds a little louder than the TV which plays in the background, her words meant to reach Haeun who’s in the kitchen making tea. Her new _diet_ means she can only drink tea for breakfast and since she stayed at Youra’s last night, Youra’s Saturday morning is now not so boring. “Like, he gives me such weirdly phrased texts. He’ll text me to see if I’m okay in the evenings but instead of saying like, _make sure you’ve eaten_, he just says _eat dinner_ and will leave me on read when I reply. He’s so _weird_.”

“That’s why he’s not my bias in IKON,” Haeun replies from the kitchen.

“But should I just blank him?”

“Blank him?” Youra’s left in silence for a moment until Haeun appears from the kitchen with a dim smile on her lips. “I don’t believe you could blank him for even a second. You’re in love with him and that makes anything to do with ignoring him _hard_ for you. No matter what you say to me, you love Bobby and that isn’t going to go away cause he texts you really badly.”

Youra sighs, laying back against the couch as she shuts her eyes. She’s starting to block the memories of the two of them in the hopes it will make forgetting him easier. “I highly doubt that Bobby is still in love with me, though.”

Bobby had snapped out of his victim complex and text Youra for the first time again, meaning that he wasn’t being awkward with her like when they met. He wasn’t exactly _nice_, but it was better than being ignored - Youra got to talk to him like he was her boyfriend still. There wasn’t any distance, except there was - Youra still had the lingering thought at the back of her mind that, _even though she didn’t exactly cheat on him because they weren’t together_, she cheated on him with his closest friend.

Hanbin is a whole rollercoaster on his own.

“You’ll be surprised,” Haeun tells her. She re-emerges with a cup of tea in her hands and approaches Youra, setting the cup down on the coffee table and sitting beside her. “I overheard him talking to someone about you, actually.”

“Talking to who?”

Haeun rolls her eyes. “Why is that the most important piece of information to you? Listen. He said that he regrets what happened, but he’s afraid of approaching you. He’s a _guy_. Guys are awkward at stuff like this. I still get messages from all my exes. I know about this stuff, so trust me. He _still_ loves you.”

“But I don’t know if I really forgive him for what happened.”

“I guess what he said was pretty shitty.” Haeun shrugs as she brings her knees to her chest. “But, if you can forgive him for this then he can forgive you for anything else in the future that’s equally as bad. It’s like a free pass to, _I don’t know,_ experience someone other than him. Have a threesome with Junhoe. Something he would hate.”

Bobby would most definitely hate a threesome with Junhoe. He had expressed his, let’s say, _disdain _for you mentioning anything to do with how Junhoe looked, sounded, performed, ex cetera, since he found out about Junhoe’s previous crush.

“What makes you assume he would _have_ to hate something sexual?” Youra asks.

Haeun, a self-proclaimed genius, smiles softly. She knows what she means, and at the forefront of Youra’s own thoughts is the one telling her that he _has_ to forgive her for what happened with Hanbin. _You hope_. Maybe Hanbin was a little far fetched.

“This is Bobby we’re talking about. He didn’t even like it at the Christmas party when Mino looked at you in a _more than friendly_ manner, and we both know that Mino wouldn’t go that far with you. My case is made - he will have to give you a free pass in that aspect for really insulting you where it hurt.”

“But I don’t want a free pass.”

“You don’t want a threesome with Junhoe?”

Youra remains emotionless. “No, I don’t.”

“You don’t want to try out someone else?”

Again, Youra doesn’t crack a smile. She can’t find it in her to get any humour out of Haeun’s words like expected - there’s far more going on than Haeun knew about. “I don’t want anything like that. I don’t want to do that to Bobby, I guess. It would hurt him a lot.”

_Not __again_. Not hurt him _again_.

Youra didn’t exactly want to do it to him to begin with, but she had to live with it, for now anyway. Just until she really had to say something to Bobby and ensure for the rest of eternity, he would hate her. There wasn’t even an appropriate time to say something to him, it would be one of those _in the moment_ things and that scared Youra the most.

Haeun is silent, not happy that Youra took her words seriously. Youra ends up staring over at the TV until she sees her phone vibrating over and over, and she’s curious to investigate. Usually she only got spammed by Junhoe, but she definitely hadn’t seen just his name on her screen yet.

_**Hwannie**__has added you to the group chat ‘__**한빈의**_ _**새일파티**__’_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _No one has done any prep for Hanbin’s birthday_

_ **Hwannie** _ _: So I have taken it upon myself to make the plans_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _I hate you all, I bet you forgot it was his birthday_

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _I didnt forget_

_ **Yunhyeong** _ _:_ _Neither did I, we have been discussing in person_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _not with me_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ @_Youra__ has anyone planned anything with you_

_ **Donghyuk** _ _:_ _why would she know?_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _because she’s friends with hanbin and deserves to know_

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _she won’t rat us out_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _you ratted yourself out. Can we please discuss this?_

_ **Bobby** _ _:_ _i just think he wanted to spend it alone, actually_

_ **Bobby** _ _:_ _that’s what he told me_

_ **Chan** _ _:_ _he’s an adult now we don’t need to surprise him_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _we do._

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _you’ve annoyed him now_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _what did you discuss in person about his birthday, Junhoe?_

_ **Chan** _ _:_ _you’ve annoyed him now :)_

_ **Bobby** _ _:_ _get him a card and a cake and be done with it, you know he won’t like that much attention_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _there’s no fun in that_

_ **Bobby** _ _:_ _it will be the most convenient way to celebrate his birthday without causing a fuss_

_ **Yunhyeong** _ _:_ _why don’t we throw a small surprise party?_

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _how small??_

_ **Yunhyeong** _ _:_ _us, maybe some others. No more than 15_

_ **Yunhyeong: ** _ _invite some other people who he’s friends with, like mino_ _ etc_

_ **Donghyuk** _ _:_ _and we do it at home too?_

_ **Hwannie** _ _:_ _it’s not too flashy_ _, yeah_

_ **Bobby** _ _:_ _I still don’t think he’d like it_

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _you’re not judging this_

_ **Juneya** _ _:_ _what do you think @Youra? Since you’re the only one who clearly hasn’t done any planning_

Well no shit Junhoe, Youra didn’t even remember that it was Hanbin’s birthday this soon. She’d pushed it right to the back of her thoughts on the premise that she’d be avoiding everything Hanbin related for a while - including the rest of iKON. Not that that was going well considering that she spent an entire night with Hanbin watching movies together, and then they got lunch together, and they spoke all the time…

She ignores the message anyway and let the bickering continue on between them, who has and hasn’t done what. She gets some messages privately from Junhoe about a joint gift coming from them both and she agrees, mostly because Bobby did always say he wanted a new steamer and Junhoe found a pretty good, but really expensive, brand he would like.

Yeah, she didn’t really want to think about Hanbin right now. Since her thoughts this past twenty minutes or so had been tailored to the idea of Bobby still being in love with her, it was hard to get Hanbin in on that thought process.

Well, there was always the problem that Youra didn’t like the idea of a party with him - she was very clear on what happened the last time they were drunk together, and she _really_ didn’t want a repeat. Youra guesses that it is unlikely the same will happen, but her luck seems to fade away quicker than anything else these days so she doesn’t hold anything to it.

Hanbin has a lot of thoughts he doesn’t share, anyway, and judging by how he acts around Youra sometimes there’s a good chance that _she_ was one of those thoughts too.

_Moving on._

“If I go to Hanbin’s birthday party, will you come?” Youra asks Haeun.

Haeun waits for a moment, deciding her phone is more important before looking back up to Youra. New chaebol boyfriend she had to impress, Youra got the deal. Everyone had to make their money somehow. “Depends. When is it?”

“October 22nd. I don’t want to go alone.”

Youra thinks, for just a second, Haeun will be her knight in shining armour and come with her to the party so she doesn’t have anyone hanging around her all night. Youra thinks that _maybe_, just maybe, she’ll get out of this one and she’ll have a good time.

Didn’t she just realise her luck was never going that way? Of course Haeun has a date night already planned with the chaebol she’s been seeing.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Youra had thrown away her schedule when she realised that avoiding everyone in YG was pretty much impossible. No matter what she did, from that one time she saw Bobby, she saw him _everywhere_.

So she decided to run with it, work with what she got, and act as if the world was completely new and everything wasn’t effecting her.

The whole break up thing didn’t affect her so much now. She tried not to think of Bobby and distracted herself with Haeun, Jinhwan, and Junhoe, with Hanbin added in occasionally when she knew it was going to be _just _them. It was easiest to see Hanbin when it was just them two because there wasn’t some massive secret she was hiding from everyone.

Youra enjoyed spending time with Hanbin, he was actually a decent guy. He was shy but his personality underneath was not what she expected. She saw why him and Bobby were so close now, and she honestly did get one well with Hanbin to the point she considered him close to her.

She ended up telling him personal stuff when they were together last. She told him all the shitty relationships she’d been in, all the equally shitty friends she’d had, and all the stuff she’d told Bobby when they were together. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, it was wiser to keep some things secret, but she wanted him to know.

Youra trusted Hanbin. Enough to believe him when he said that he wouldn’t tell Bobby, and he would make sure that what happened between the two of them wouldn’t have an effect on his friendship with Bobby.

That was why she decided to start hanging out with him at work, too. Because she trusted him.

“Ew, you’re disgusting,” Youra says, pushing at Hanbin’s shoulder. He shoots her a sad look but continues drinking the bubble tea like her words didn’t even matter. “Chocolate milk tea and _blueberry_ popping pearls? You need help.”

Hanbin rolls his eyes. “It tastes better than lychee and honeydew. _You _need to start tasting the future. I’m practically a hybrid at this point.”

“You’ve just burnt away all of your taste buds with your weird flavoured tea,” Youra hits back, moving her laptop from her lap and onto the floor beside her.

Hanbin had stopped by the legal office on his way out and asked if she wanted some bubble tea, which of course she didn’t turn down. That ended up with the two of them going out together, and Hanbin inviting her to sit in one of the practice studios with him whilst he tried to pull some lyrics together.

“Not everyone is boring,” Hanbin says. He leans back against the wall as he looks over to Youra with a slight smile. “Are you busy tonight?”

Youra shakes her head as she drinks from the straw to her own bubble tea. “Haeun asked me to go with her to this party type thing. Not a party, really. Well… I don’t know what it is. Her boyfriend invited her, and she invited me. Said that he wants it to be busy as his family company are donating to charity as part of it. I guess it’s a charity dinner.”

“You really want to spend your evening with a bunch of old people?”

“They’re not all old.” Youra defends her plans with some honour, though she isn’t really sure herself why she’s going. She didn’t particularly want to go but was going just in case something happened to Haeun. “I might as well just go so that I can say I’ve been to something like that. Plus, I don’t want to back out on Haeun now, I don’t want something to happen to her..”

Hanbin hums, writing something down in the lyric book he has with him. She’s not sure what he wrote, but he’s been occasionally writing some stuff down when she talks. “You could always have an emergency come up and have to leave early? Providing that Haeun is okay without you there and her boyfriend is a creep.”

“I will definitely text you if I need you to pretend to be a police officer on a blocked number and say my car might have been stolen.”

Hanbin’s smile widens when Youra agrees, though he hides his face in the lyric book once more. She watches him for a moment before she sips on her drink again, looking up to the ceiling as she thinks about things.

About Bobby. About YG. About Hanbin.

She briefly looks over to him again, though she’s interrupted by the door opening and a figure stopping a few steps after walking in. Of course it would be Bobby; she’s unsurprised to see him staring at the two of them with some kind of confusion. He doesn’t seem angry, yet. Maybe jealous. Nah, it was confusion and curiosity.

Hanbin looks over to Youra first of all, wondering what she’s staring at, and then looks to Bobby. That probably confused Bobby even more, because the last time Bobby checked, the two of them weren’t that close. Thank god Hanbin is still friends with him.

“You alright?” Hanbin asks, closing his book and discarding it over to the side with his coat.

“Yeah,” Bobby answers, dropping his things near one of the chairs on the other side of the room. He takes off his coat and leaves it there, too. “I wanted to get here a little early to talk to you.”

Hanbin nods. “Okay, sure.”

“I’ll go,” Youra states, closing her laptop and gathering a few of her things so that she can leave. Bobby is watching her, as is Hanbin, but she only looks to the latter to say goodbye. “Let me know if you need to know anything else about the copyright stuff again. It’s not the easiest to remember.”

Hanbin frowns at her words, but when he turns to Bobby he realises _why _she was trying to cover it up. She almost kills him for throwing her under the bus like that, but she realises that Hanbin isn’t in the same boat as her and probably doesn’t realise how tense their relationship is right now.

“Yeah, I’ll let you know. Thanks for your help.”

Youra doesn’t mean to make it awkward, but it just happens. She grabs her stuff and leaves before Bobby spends any more time looking between the two of them like he _knew _what they did. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t hear any of their conversation before she walks away, though.

She hears them discussing something to do with the composition, but just as she’s about to walk away she hears Bobby mention her name so she just stops.

“Since when did you and Youra spend lunch together?” Bobby asks. His voice is strained, and he doesn’t sound too happy.

“I needed to ask her about some copyright law,” Hanbin says, continuing her lie. Youra hopes that now Hanbin will be able to see why lying to Bobby was necessary for them _all _to peaceful lives. “I just thought it was easier than calling or emailing, you know?”

Bobby is quiet for a moment, but after she hears some chairs being pushed around and a speaker being turned on, his voice comes back loud and clear. “You’ve been spending a lot of time together recently.”

“Have we?” Hanbin returns, unphased.

Youra doesn’t even want to hear Bobby’s reply. She walks away from there without giving him the chance to scare her away from ever talking to Hanbin again.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

For the first time in a while, things were looking normal for Youra.

Well, as normal as they could be in the circumstances, and also normal compared to how things had been recently which were without a doubt hectic. She had a few people to thank for that. Mostly it was Junhoe who made life bearable, Haeun covering for her when she might have had a meeting which involved Bobby, and Jinhwan giving some good life advice when she needed it most.

“You don’t think it’s been awkward between us, do you?” Hanbin asks, looking up from his phone. He tucks it into his pocket before resting his arms on the table. “Like, do you feel comfortable around me?”

Youra agrees with a nod as she drinks some of the herbal tea she ordered. “If I didn’t feel comfortable around you, I wouldn’t have come here. I also wouldn’t spend so much time with you.”

Hanbin hums, though doesn’t seem too convinced. He dipped between being shy around her, keeping his thoughts to himself and adopting a timid nature, and also being the hyperactive, annoying as fuck, leader that everyone in YG loved so much. Today seemed to be a timid day, judging on how he was acting.

He’d asked Youra to come to lunch with him since he wanted to get away from the YG building and spend some of his time thinking about something other than music. You weren’t sure why he didn’t ask Jinhwan, Yunhyeong, or even Bobby, but you assumed he asked you because there was still a lot on his mind which he was scared of telling someone.

“I’m not sure what to do for my birthday,” Hanbin states. He must have sensed that _he_ was the one making it awkward between them now.

“Didn’t you say you wanted a quiet one this year?” Youra replies, recalling what Bobby had said on the group chat. Hanbin had no idea they were pulling together a whole party for him behind the scenes. “You could just chill with the guys, do some dumb shit. You know.”

Hanbin seems reluctant to agree, shaking his head at her suggestion. “I don’t think that will sit well with them?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because…” Hanbin looks over to the side, out onto the pond that was outside the café they picked for lunch. It was a pretty cute space and Hanbin said that he liked the food here, and the aesthetic. It fit in well with her Instagram vibe, too. “I don’t know. Things haven’t been the same lately. I feel like you’re my only friend right now.”

Youra didn’t see things that way. From how Junhoe made it sound, Hanbin was acting fine with everyone now. “Why do you feel like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just an overwhelming feeling when I’m with everyone else. I feel like I’m not there. I feel like they’re not my friends. I feel like I can’t talk to them about anything and I’m acting like everything is fine when it’s not. It’s not the same as it was before.”

“What’s stopping you from being the same with them as you used to be?” Youra asks.

Hanbin shrugs. He probably didn’t mean to look so solemn, but nothing other than sadness could be attributed to those glassy and tired looking eyes. “You?”

“Me?”

“I want to be with you, not them,” Hanbin tells her, “you understand me, you know how I feel. Talking to you is good. I understand why Bobby would ditch us for you. I know why when Junhoe has a problem he comes to you, too. You’re good at talking. You’re good at listening. I need both of those things right now.”

Youra isn’t sure how she’s supposed to answer that. She had heard before that she was good at those things but she never expected Hanbin to say it. She listened to what he had to say but most of the time she was the one talking. She knew Junhoe always considered his own _personal therapist_, and maybe she was good at the whole CBT act, but Hanbin… no, it hadn’t been happening with him.

“Do you think it’s Bobby?”

Hanbin hums. “Most probably this has something to do with him.”

“Why don’t you go with him somewhere, get some food or something?” Youra suggests. She knew Bobby was always down for that. He might still turn her down if she offered, though.

“He talks to me, but he isn’t talking_ with_ me,” Hanbin states. He looks over to the counter to see if his food is coming, since he had been practicing all morning. Defeated, he turns back to Youra and looks her dead in the eyes. “He’s been off with me because of you. Maybe he doesn’t like that we’re close now. I‘m meant to be his friends, not yours.”

Youra agrees with that. Bobby was petty all the time. “Bobby will get over himself eventually.”

“But what if he doesn’t? Am I meant to just stop talking to you for his sake? Do I act like everything between us doesn’t exist to benefit him? I can’t put Bobby before me at all times just because of what he’s like.”

That was technically what Youra did.

She should have been selfish at times. Not apologised where she didn’t need to, didn’t let Bobby do everything he wanted when she didn’t want to, not make a compromise when he could have done the exact same thing. She should have thought of herself.

Maybe they weren’t the best couple after all.

On paper they were perfect. In the eyes of everyone else they were a match made in heaven, brought together by cupid himself.

When Haeun told her to experience someone else, she should have listened. She only knew Bobby outside her other shitty short-term relationships. She only knew what a relationship with Bobby was like. She’d never know what it was like to be in a relationship with someone who listened to her.

And Hanbin was a better listener than he considered himself to be.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

“You look really nice,” Hanbin says softly. Youra had missed him walking out here, she’d missed him creeping up behind her and shutting the door to the party inside. She does now, however, meet his eyes with contentment and smile. “Why aren’t you with Bobby? I doubt he’d want to leave you alone with people like Zico here.”

Youra stifles a laugh as she looks back over the lit streets of Seoul. “Bobby didn’t even say hello.”

“Neither did I, to be honest.”

He’s not lying, though Youra had shrugged off Hanbin’s lack of response because so many people wanted to speak to him and wish him a happy birthday. She’d spent most of the night with Junhoe and Jinhwan, taking care of Junhoe because he had _already_ drunk too much, when she was joined by Bobby who ignored her existence completely to speak to Jinhwan, she decided that walking out was the best thing for her. She thought it was Bobby’s eyes on her as she left but she sees that she might have been wrong now.

“I meant to say you look beautiful,” Hanbin corrects himself. He stands beside her, resting his crossed arms on the railing.

“I meant to say happy birthday, too. I hope this wasn’t too much,” she answers him. Youra tries to ignore his comment but it lingers in her mind for a while. Hanbin’s being nice, surely. He has too, it’s his party. He had to entertain the guests well, so a compliment wasn’t too far-fetched. “Junhoe and I did a joint gift, I hope you like it. He came up with the idea.”

Hanbin nods once, looking away from Youra and back to the lights. She can only see him from the corner of her eyes but there’s something on his mind. He’s back in his reserved mindset. Youra knows he’s been drinking but it doesn’t seem like that much if he’s struggling to voice his concerns. Honestly, Youra partially wishes he wouldn’t tell her, that he’d keep it a secret which she’d never know and never have to worry about at all.

But things don’t go her way, do they?

“Why have you been avoiding me these past couple days? Has Bobby said something?”

Youra doesn’t react, she knew he would notice because she never left his texts on read but she had been doing so the past couple days. She put her phone on do not disturb as an excuse to miss his calls. “Why did you become so close to me all of a sudden? We barely spoke.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Want to take a guess how I became so close to you?” Hanbin questions. He looks Youra dead in the eyes and it sends a shiver down her spine. They probably shouldn’t do this with alcohol in their systems. “Seriously? How can you ask me something like that? We’ve barely even spoken about what happened. You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I can if it makes things easier.”

Hanbin rolls his eyes, shaking his head as he looks away from Youra. “I don’t know if you’re stupid or what.”

“_Or what_,” Youra answers, bringing a hand to her hair. She runs her fingers through the roots and sighs. Hanbin is watching her intently, gaze looking over every aspect of her. “What is it that you haven’t told me about that night? That you remember it better than me?”

He shakes his head again. “I don’t remember a thing, just wanting to throw up in the middle of the night.”

“Thank god you didn’t. I probably would have thrown up too. And I guarantee I would have made you pay for a cleaning of my entire apartment if you did that.”

Hanbin’s wearing such casual clothes. Youra remembers the top because he was wearing it that night too, at least that’s what was on her floor. His hair isn’t styled well, he’s definitely been trying to run his fingers through it too much, too. His eyes are wide, and she wants to know what he has to say. It’s almost as if he’s scared to tell her. He didn’t expect this party but he looks like he has other stuff on his mind.

“What is it then? What haven’t you told me?” she questions him.

“Once I tell you, you can’t act like I never said it.” Hanbin takes a deep breath as he turns to Youra. She looks back to him, confused, but nods in agreement. “You won’t carry on blanking me or block my number to avoid me. Because _you_wanted me to tell you.”

Youra nods again. Crossing her arms over her chest, she takes a step back from the railing. Her heels are pressed together and the cold air pushes the ends of her hair with it, the breeze causing her to shiver. “Alright, tell me. I won’t do any of that.”

“Promise?”

“I mean…” Hanbin holds out his little finger for her to link with. She can’t help but smile at his gesture, doing as he requests. “Sure. I promise I won’t block your number or carry on blank you.”

Hanbin hums contently. He pauses for a moment to look back at the door, but turns to you a second later. “I don’t think it was a mistake.”

“Like…” Youra follows his trail back to the door. The glass means that she can see everyone inside, and she can also see that Bobby’s currently in some contest with Junhoe, meaning he wasn’t going to come outside looking of Hanbin. Maybe this was the best time to talk about this. “You think we did it on purpose? You know we were both drunk as _hell,_ right? Neither of us really could have asked for it to happen.”

“Yeah, I know. But I think there was more to it than just it accidentally happening because you were sad, I was lonely, and we were both drunk.”

Youra holds back from laughing at his words. He’s not serious, right? There’s one thing she _thinks_ he’s implying and it really is laughable. “Are you implying that I’ve fallen in love with you, Kim Hanbin?”

“No,” Hanbin states. He shakes his head as he turns around and leans back against the metal railing, bowing his head a little. “You really are stupid, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does!” Youra stands directly in front of Hanbin and places her hand on his shoulder, forcing him to look up from the ground and straight at her. She takes one deep breath and exhales sharply, offering Hanbin the most passive aggressive of smiles. “Listen to me. You just told me you had something to tell me so you can’t go all cryptic on my ass. Tell me what the fuck you’re thinking or I swear to god I will cause a scene inside. I’ve done it with Bobby, don’t you think I won’t do it with you.”

Hanbin mumbles something under his breath, Youra thinks he says _fine_ but she’s not entirely sure. She expects him to push her hand off his shoulder but he doesn’t, he looks her directly in the eyes and swallows whatever pride was left in his empty being. “I think I’m in love with you, Youra.”

“Me?” she repeats. Her mind goes blank and it’s really the only word that comes to mind.

Of all the things Hanbin could have said, he _had_ to say that.

_In Junhoe’s words, __shit__._

“Do you not remember before you and Bobby got together? He would follow you around like a lost puppy because he wanted to impress you with absolutely anything he could do. You never noticed! You didn’t know his feelings and I don’t think you realise how I feel either because you’ve completely blocked it out!” Hanbin looks frustrated; he starts to throw his arms around as he speaks. “I know, it’s stupid. I’m a bad friend. I always wanted what you and Bobby had and no matter what I did I realised that it wasn’t a relationship I wanted, it was you. I wanted to be in Bobby’s position because you are… you’re special. I can’t describe it, but there’s something about you which draws me in and no matter what I do I can’t get you out of my head. I know you’re Bobby’s girlfriend, _ex_, whatever. I promise you that when I found you that day I didn’t have any selfish intentions. I wanted you to be okay and I don’t know what happened that night that caused us both to end up in the position we did but if anyone had any influence on it, then it was me.”

The silence that looms between them is suffocating. Youra and Hanbin are both staring at each other, neither of them dares to look away and it falls on her to decide how to continue.

She really never, _ever_, noticed a thing. She doesn’t even recall a time when her and Hanbin were that close before all of this to see his feelings up close. He wouldn’t lie, though. This isn’t Hanbin covering his own ass by telling her some bullshit story for why they slept together. No, _no_. This makes things worse and by the look in his eyes, she can tell that he knows it.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Youra tells him, looking away from him and to the lights behind.

Youra attempts to pull her hand away from him, but Hanbin catches it and brings her closer to him. He’s so close that she can hear his breathing. His hand is slightly clammy but it doesn’t distract him. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t just tell you, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be honest with you from the start about how I felt and I’m—"

“Dude!” Youra pulls herself back from Hanbin at the sound of Junhoe’s voice. One glance at Junhoe and she _knows_ he’s going to be questioning both of them on what’s happened here, but she hopes he’s drunk enough to forget this by tomorrow. Youra had already established, though, that things don’t _exactly_ go her way. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, why are you out here?”

Hanbin laughs and crosses his arms over his chest. “We were talking about work.”

“You’re kidding,” Junhoe says. He narrows his eyes at the both of them before turning around to see who’s near to him. He gestures for someone to come outside but Youra don’t see who.

As it turns out, it’s Bobby. He looks between Youra and Hanbin for a moment before turning his _full_ attention to Hanbin and giving him a disappointed look. “Are you coming in or what?”

Hanbin offers her an apologetic look before he leaves. But it’s fine. She figures being on her own, away from him and Bobby and everyone else, is for the best. Especially now.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Youra really did plan on going home. She went to Junhoe’s room, picked up her jacket and purse, and was planning on ordering an uber so she could make a quiet exit whilst Hanbin was stuck with Mino, Bobby and Zico. The three of them would keep him distracted enough for her to slip out the door and only have one or two people noticing.

It was the perfect plan, she had it all figured out, but for whatever reason Junhoe ended up looking for something in her room and caught her red handed. Some drunken bickering from him and he had forced her to put her stuff back down and join everyone outside once more.

Youra wasn’t there for an argument, so that’s exactly what she did. She followed Junhoe out, she forgot what Hanbin said to her and she stayed with him and Jinhwan for an hour or so. She probably made a mistake on taking every drink that Junhoe passed her, and furthered these mistakes by agreeing to play a drinking game with everyone which resulted in her being past the point of having any mental capacity anymore.

Everyone was like that, though. The only person who wasn’t drinking as much was Donghyuk and that was because he was on _don’t break anything duty_. Also duty to make sure that nothing stupid happened whilst everyone else was drunk. Apparently he offered because he has this thing to go to the next morning which was important.

So at the very least, Youra wasn’t the only mess in there.

The last thing she really remembered was arguing with Chanwoo about some video game, and then continuing to argue with Junhoe about the songs that should be played. That resulted in Junhoe’s phone being taken off the AUX, replaced with hers so that she could put on a mix of Gray, Loco, and some Twice peppered in here and there.

Apparently Twice got the party started again because _everyone _joined in when TT came on shuffle and from then on it was all a blur.

_Well_, it was a blur until she ended up in one of the bedrooms, her phone left plugged into the speaker and her hand on someone else as they led her wherever they wanted.

Maybe it was because she didn’t drink that much for a while, but things started to become clearer for her. It wasn’t just any person in front of her (thank god, she didn’t want to end up in a room alone with one of Hanbin’s other friends), she was with Hanbin. He was trying to change his top since he split something down it and she was sitting on his bed watching him with wide eyes.

Was the door locked? Youra giggles to herself as she checks to see whether it is. She can’t see anything that would show it is locked.

“What?” Hanbin asks, holding his new shirt out in front of him. His head is turned slightly to the side, lips open. “What’s funny?”

Youra shakes her head innocently. “Nothing! Nothing.”

“You sure?” Hanbin asks.

“What would I be laughing at?”

Hanbin doesn’t answer her for a moment, but he throws his clean shirt to the side and instead opts to take a seat beside Youra, leaning his head on her shoulder. She didn’t realise he had more than the one tattoo, but she’s brought back to his face when he looks up to her. “You think I’m a joke.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Why don’t you like me back?” Hanbin questions this time. Youra thinks he has a good question, but she can’t answer it so she stays silent. Hanbin is clearly not happy about this. “We would be good together. We would be the best couple ever. I love you.”

Youra remains emotionless still. She really isn’t sure how to answer him. He confessed to her earlier! How was anyone supposed to answer a confession like that? She wasn’t even sure what to think. She just stares blankly at Hanbin in the hopes that he’ll carry on talking and make some new conversation because it was _so _much easier to avoid him this way.

But he doesn’t. Hanbin sits up again, staring at Youra with the exact same thoughts. She feels bad because everyone hates rejection but… _wow_. Youra didn’t realise that Hanbin was pretty attractive. Well of course she knew but seeing him now in the dim light and with some alcohol goggles she was actually enjoying just looking at him.

Hanbin, however, was not.

He rolls his eyes as he looks away from her, mumbling something to himself which Youra can’t quite understand. She leans in a little bit closer to him, resting her hand on his thigh to support herself. She only wanted to know what he said. Hanbin had a really nice voice. It was smooth and also a bit rough. She liked that.

Hanbin doesn’t carry on talking though, he instead turns back to her with frustration for her not answering still. He seems surprised to see her so close, eyes widening when he realises she’s less than a few centimetres from him.

His gaze shifts down to her lips for a moment, and Youra only realises because she was watching what he was doing so closely. When he looks up to her own eyes again, he leans forward and catches her off guard with a poorly timed and easily forgotten kiss.

She barely moves as he tries to get her to feel the emotion he has for her. She’s just sat there, not frozen in place as he brings his hand to her cheek and does all the work for her. She never pushed him away. She never _wanted _to push him away.

And maybe it was the intoxication of her own feelings that mean she’s left with _no _idea as to what happened after that. The alcohol in her system made things clearer for her. She’s drunk with thoughts of him and there’s nothing that can stop her from feeling that way. 

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

When Youra wakes up with a headache and stiff bones, she realised she never remembered to drink water the night before. She recalls that she set a reminder, she repeated it to herself over and over, and yet here she was without that water in her system. Instead she had the alcohol making her wish that she wouldn’t have stayed at the party after all.

She tries to click her next as she moves around in bed, turning onto her front and shoving her face into the pillow. She’s distracted by the knots in her muscles for a moment, but not long enough to realise that that this pillow doesn’t smell like her.

She lifts her head up slightly, looking around at the bedspread and realising that it’s not hers either.

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh fucking shit. _

Youra panics a little as she pushes herself up, sitting on her knees and immediately bringing her hands to her chest. She feels material. Okay, that’s good. Youra looks down and realises that she is wearing a shirt, an oversized and black tee at that, and by shifting her body a little she realises that she is _still _wearing underwear. _Ohthankgod._

She runs her hands through her hair, pushing it back over her shoulders as she tries to adjust her back a little more. Her eyes dart around the room to see if she can pick up on anything which would give away where she was. This is too tidy to be Junhoe’s room. It could be anyone’s room, though. She tried to run through her memories of the night before and she stops of the very last thing she can remember.

“Hanbin,” she whispers to herself, hand covering her mouth.

“Yeah?” the very boy answers. Youra turns quickly to see him walking through the door with two cups in his hand. He closes the door with his foot and puts the cups on his desk. “Something wrong?”

Youra stares at him with absent thoughts for a moment. She stutters her reply to him because of her mismatched thoughts. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“I made you coffee,” Hanbin tells her, gesturing to the cup on his side. He tries to smile but it fails last minute. “You can keep the shirt. It… looks nice on you.”

Youra doesn’t register the compliment at first, still focused on what she could remember from last night. She brings her hand to her face, touching her eyes to see whether she’s still wearing eyelashes. _Nope_. There are also no black marks on the pillow. “Who took off my make up?”

“You asked me to before you passed out,” Hanbin states.

“Oh.” Youra brings her hand back to her lap. She moves so that she’s sitting cross legged with her back against the wall. Bobby had never done that for her before. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”

Hanbin shakes his head. He sits down on the chair he has by his desk, keeping some distance between them. “You asked me to, did you think I was going to just ignore you?”

“No, it’s just…” Youra decides to stop before she incriminates herself with thoughts of somebody else. “Thanks for also lending me clothes. I appreciate that. And for letting me pass out here. I’m sorry, I’m a mess.”

“Stop apologising to me. I don’t mind.”

Youra nods, though she still felt apologetic. She remembers everything he said to her yesterday and that she never replied to it. That must have been hard for him. She does feel _really _bad about that. “Did you enjoy your birthday at least?”

“Yeah,” Hanbin says, “I got to spend it with everyone I care about and we all had a good time. It wasn’t what I was expecting but thanks for putting that together for me. I’m glad I didn’t end up doing nothing in the end.”

At least Hanbin had a good time. That was the main goal and they achieved it. She could celebrate with Jinhwan, Junhoe, and the others some other time for actually getting Hanbin to have a good time. Especially in a time like this.

Plus, Hanbin doesn’t seem awkward around her anymore. He is smiling and talking like normal, not acting all weird that she’s wearing his shirt and laying in his bed without that many clothes on, and they slept together that night and…

_Ohmygod they kissed._

Youra is sure that Hanbin realises she remembered exactly what happened that night when her eyes widen and she looks over to him like he killed her first pet. She barely remembers what happened, she really just remembered him kissing her and her not knowing what to do.

But holy shit, Hanbin kissed her and _she_ didn’t push him away. Youra enjoyed it. Youra kissed Hanbin.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Somehow Youra manages to avoid all contact with IKON and anything related to them for four days after the party, starting after she left Hanbin in a rush and said she had to be at home because her landlord was doing an inspection. It must have been some kind of record in days without seeing any of them, since whenever something like _that_ happens each and every one of them would be jumping to find the latest set of gossip.

Youra assumes that between them, this being Junhoe and Jinhwan, they had considered her to have just gone home instead of staying with Hanbin. They wouldn’t have known she was there unless they were waiting to hear someone leave. Hanbin also said Junhoe passed out first and Jinhwan disappeared before Youra and him did. Actually, one of them did contact her but she didn’t think much of it because she had someone else on her mind. Bobby messaged to see where she was and Youra just said at work, because that’s exactly where she had been the entire time since the party.

According to Haeun, Jinhwan, Junhoe, and Bobby had come in to look for her and each time were turned away empty handed. Youra had landed a new office on the ground floor since Yujin had sent to her help out HR with some legal queries and she needed to spend as much time with them as possible. No one else knew this, thank god, apart from Haeun.

So Youra had made the luckiest escape for those four days, up until she ended up bumping straight into Junhoe (the one who she needed to avoid the most, actually) in a cafe when they were on a break and ended up sitting with him as he bombarded her with questions that everyone wanted to know the answer to.

“But why were you out there with him?” Junhoe asks, raising a brow. He doesn’t give her a chance to answer and carries on regardless of her surprised look. “You were holding his hand, right? I know I had some drinks but I remember that. Whatever you guys were talking about seemed pretty important if I take a guess. So what was it?”

Youra shrugs. “It’s nothing. We were talking.”

“Don’t give me that, I know you’re lying.”

“It’s not important what we were doing, can friends not just talk?”

“It is important if I think it is,” Junhoe states. He picks up his frappe and sucks on the straw whilst staring inquisitively at Youra. For the first time since she knew him, Junhoe had realised there was something going on below the surface here. “Something has been going on for a while since you and Bobby broke up. I want to know what’s happened between you and Hanbin. Don’t tell me nothing, because it’s so obvious that even _Chanwoo_ asked me if he missed something. So, tell me now or I’ll tell the others to come and join us here and you can explain to everyone _and _Bobby what’s going on. You know he’s been looking for you, too. I don’t even know why that is.”

Maybe Junhoe is smarter than everyone expects him to be.

“You can’t blackmail me with that.”

Junhoe shrugs again. He picks up his phone and unlocks it, smirk on his lips. “I told Bobby to find you in the office and he looked pretty deflated when he came back. I wonder if he has something to say since he spent the party without you? I wonder what confessions he’s got to make and what questions _he _has to ask about you and Hanbin outside together?”

“Fine!” Youra sighs, looking over to the window at the passers-by. She ends up closing her eyes. A rewind of the past months would have been appreciated. “Hanbin and I were talking about…Hanbin and I. It wasn’t anything too complicated. We were talking.”

“So Bobby’s ex-girlfriend and Bobby’s best friend spend a lot of time alone together?”

It’s hard not to imagine Junhoe’s voice replaced with that of one of the Bobby fangirls around the world. It sucks.

“We’re friends,” Youra tells Junhoe. It begins to sound like she’s convincing herself more than anything. “What’s wrong with us spending time together _once_ on a balcony?”

Junhoe proceeds to shake his head at her words, expressing his distaste with kiss of his teeth. “You expect me to believe that you spent time together just _once_? I know you’re together a lot. You are with him a much as you’re with me! But why at his party and _why _were you holding his hand?”

“I’m telling you what happened, Junhoe, from my perspective. We’re friends. We were talking normally and you’re making a bigger thing of this than what it actually is so--”

“He told me.”

Youra pauses in her tracks. Her attention turns completely to Junhoe and she questions _what the __fuck__ he means_. Hanbin told him? Hanbin _fucking_ told him? No, Hanbin wouldn’t. Hanbin is a good guy and he wouldn’t mess her about like that for the sake of being an asshole to her because she didn’t reciprocate his feelings.

Or… maybe he just needed to tell someone?

Sure she had the same feelings. She so badly wanted to tell Haeun about it, she wanted to scream it every time she saw Bobby to hurt him like he hurt her, but she told Hanbin that she wouldn’t and she’s not going to go back on that promise now. But Hanbin must have the same thought process and it might have been by accident.

“It was an accident.”

That’s all Youra tells him. She can’t bring herself to explain further, she has a longing to go back home and spend time in bed doing absolutely nothing important and taking herself out of the real world for a while. Play video games, listen to sad songs, forget about this group of people _yet again_ because it never does anything good for her anyway.

“An accident?” Junhoe repeats. He takes a moment to think through it before continuing. “How can something like that be an accident? It doesn’t just happen like _that_, it builds up overtime and it was _going_ to happen and you know that just as well as I do. It wasn’t an accident and you don’t even have the right to say it is!”

“It’s not my fault we slept together! I was sad and Hanbin tried to comfort me, but it went the wrong way and neither of us even remember it! I ran out of there quicker than I ever could and I washed the sheets a thousand times because whenever I’m in my room I think about how much I betrayed Bobby but it… it was an accident. No matter what Hanbin says.”

Junhoe, for one of the only times in his life, is silent. He has a blank look on his face which scares Youra right down to the core. His mind processes again what she’s just said before he clears his throat and sits closer to the table. His voice is almost shaky. “You what?”

“Hanbin told you!”

“Hanbin told me that he fell in love with you,” Junhoe states. He can remember the entire conversation perfectly because he wanted some help with his lines and went to ask Hanbin and got stuck with Hanbin spilling his heart about what a jerk he was for liking his best friend’s boyfriend. “He... I… Nothing was ever said about you… You slept together!”

And Youra realises that she, for the third time since her break up, made one big ass booboo.

“Don’t say it so loud.” Youra realised her mistake as soon as Junhoe took a while to respond but chose not to act like it was so much of a deal. Well, she thinks she’s dealing with it well, until her eyes become glassy and she’s got a tear rolling down her cheek in front of the one person she never cried in front of. “I fucked up Junhoe. I really fucked up.”

Junhoe doesn’t agree, which, somehow, she’s thankful for. He stares at Youra for a moment before rubbing his own eyes and looking down to the table. “Does anyone else know?”

Youra shakes her head, but really, she has no idea who else might know at this point.

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

Yourahad hoped that she could make it a day without seeing Hanbin, since she, _you know_, told Junhoe the secret she said she wouldn't tell anyone. 

She checked every corridor she walked down, she made sure she worked mostly on any staff cases that weren't involved with iKON at all, and she checked with Jinhwan to see if there were any schedules that meant Hanbin was out of the way for a while. Jinhwan said they had some promotions to do for the upcoming show they were involved in, but other than that they would probably still be around. 

And it wasn't that she didn't want to talk to Hanbin. That wasn't the case.

She very much _did _enjoy Hanbin's company but she had no idea what she was supposed to do now thata, Junhoe knew exactly what happened, and b, she kissed Hanbin at his party, slept in his bed, and he made her tea the next morning before they spent all day together playing video games. She was very much stuck on how she was supposed to act around Hanbin considering that they were held somewhere between best friends and dating. If they hadn't kissed, and she hadn'tfell asleep with her head on his shoulder and woke up a few hours later with his arms around her and he was sleeping too (this was, by the way, the day after his party, after they already slept next to each other). 

Actually,Youra alreadyrealised that avoiding the members of iKON was an impossible task she reproved as being impossible. 

She sees Hanbin in the lift, which isunusual, because he usually took the stairs. 

She hadn't noticed him on the way in, which probably meant he was later than her, too. She doesn'trealise he's in the lift with her until he clears his throat and distracts her from adjusting her watch due to clocks going back. 

"_Hanbin_," she says,suprise filling her. She smiles at him, though she tucks her hair behind her ears before her hands are stuck in her pockets. "Hi. What's up?"

Hanbin shakes his head. "Nothing much. Didn't you hear me call you on the way in?"

"Sorry," she tells him, "I wasn't paying attention. I got this email yesterday which has been bothering me all night and I'm still thinking about it."

"What is it?" Hanbin asks as he leans back against the glass on the elevator sides. 

He seems a bit different. She can't put her finger on it, though the way he's acting is not something she would have considered 'usual Hanbin'. He's not angry, he's not sad, he's just... off with her.

"Just this privacy thing that's happening right now," she recalls an email sent by the director of corporate governance and how there is a big problem on an email trail being shared to the public, pretty much exposing a few inside issues which could later cause problems. "Some information got shared and it's going to cause a lot of problems."

"Is it?" Hanbin asks. He looks over to the door of the elevator, catching what level they're on. They had a few to go to the top. "What problems?"

Youra shrugs. "Someone could lose their job. More than one person probably. It shows what kind of assholes do actually work here."

Hanbin hums, looking back to her for a second. He watches over her figure until she raises her eyebrows expectantly. Hanbin obviously has something to say. He was never good actor and she saw through this act of his. She wants to ask him what the problem is though she thinks that might cause more problems, which is exactly what she can’t deal with right now.

So she waits. She watches the numbers of the floors tick by until they reach the very top floor which is where she was heading to grab some post. She looks up to Hanbin as the doors open, expecting him to say something. When he doesn’t, she realises it’s a _her _problem.

“Where are you heading?” Youra asks, heading out of the door.

Hanbin follows her, walking at her side as she heads down the corridor to the room where they keep all the letters. “I, _um_… just needed to come up here for a bit.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” Hanbin states. He looks down when she meets his eyes with a questioning stare. _Fine. _If he was going to play that game then so would she. Fortunately Youra is intimidating enough (or Hanbin cares enough) for him to give up his act as soon as she reaches the door to the post room. “Junhoe pulled me aside last night to tell me that he’s was disappointed in me.”

Youra knows what this is about when Junhoe is mentioned.

She never expressed her wishes to Junhoe not to tell Hanbin, or speak to him about it in general. She didn’t think that it would happen. She thought that Junhoe might have realised that there was a problem in speaking to Hanbin about it, but it was Junhoe, and she was sure he thought he was helping by talking to Hanbin.

Whatever help he thought that was, she wasn’t sure.

“He did?”

Hanbin nods. “He said he understands, but he thinks it was a shitty decision nonetheless.”

“Is this about what he told me yesterday?” Youra questions. She hears some footsteps coming down the corridor, so she pulls Hanbin into the post room with her and locks the door behind him. He’s cornered himself across the room from her, though she realises he’s nervous when he starts to chew on the inside of his cheeks. “Why did you tell him you were in love with me?”

“Why did you tell him we slept together! Do you have a death wish? It’s Junhoe!”

“I trust him enough not to tell anyone,” Youra responds, finding herself defensive. Somehow she did trust him more than she trusted the others. “I thought you told him, so I started talking about him and he told me that you loved me. That’s worse! You know Junhoe won’t put a filter on that, he’ll assume everyone knows about it other than Bobby and everyone other than Bobby will know and then Bobby will know and _you _will look like that bad guy, not both of us.”

Hanbin is quiet for a moment, though he rolls his eyes and looks away as his arms are pulled across his chest. “I already told you, it is a me problem. I caused all of this, not you.”

“Shut up, Hanbin.” Youra takes a few steps towards him, stopping until he looks back up to her. She reaches out her hand and places it on his shoulder, squeezing a little to comfort him in the best was she could given the nature of their relationship now. “Stop taking all of this on yourself, you know that whatever happened between us, and whatever does happen between us a something we both have control over. I’m sorry for telling Junhoe and I should have told you after, I didn’t know he was going to talk to you about it. I should have thought it through. I’m sorry.”

Hanbin is still for a moment. His gaze moves from her hand, to her eyes and then back down to the ground. He nods a few times, only slightly, before he pulls Youra into his chest and embraces her tightly. She appreciates the gesture, though isn’t sure which his attitude changed so quickly. Or she wasn’t used to things being this way – an apology and things are okay. “I’m sorry, too.”

♡ ~♡ ~ ♡

“Can we talk?” Hanbin asks.

Youra’s move to HR had ended sooner than she hoped; she was back up at her legal desk the next Monday morning, work piling on more than usual too. She expected someone to try and find her now that she was back, but she didn’t expect it to be Hanbin at 9:04am when he doesn’t even need to be here until past 1pm. Junhoe told her that when she begged him to update her on those schedules so she could continue avoiding everyone.

She hadn’t spoken to Hanbin, despite her promise. He didn’t actually talk to her, either. Maybe he thought that she needed space. That seemed somewhat likely.

“I’m really busy,” she tells him, gesturing to her computer. “Can it wait?”

Hanbin shakes his head, taking a step in the doorway. Luckily Youra was on her own again which worked out well - no distractions and an easy day of doing what she needed to get done. Everything was starting to work out well, at least _she_ _thought_.

It’s not hard to notice the faded bruise on Hanbin’s cheek when he steps into the light. She frowns at the sight of it, confused as to the _when, what, where, why_ and _how_ of the bruise. Hanbin would likely be murdered by whatever manager saw him first but it looked like it happened sometime last week judging by how much it had faded already. So she invites him in and he shuts the door behind him, leaving the events to continue from two weeks before.

“I love you.”

“Hanbin…”

“No,” Hanbin interrupts her as he approaches the desk. He leans on her desk and as a result Youra gets the full extent of his injury - someone _definitely_ punched him. She’d seen stuff like that in movies and shows. “I didn’t finish what I was saying on my birthday.”

Youra nods slowly, looking down to the ground for a moment. “Sorry. I-uh… Continue.”

“Do you remember last year when I fell during training? You know you’re the only person who helped me out right? You would carry my bags and give me lifts to places and it was great. I realised I could trust you. Then when I was fine after you carried on being nice to me and that’s when I started to get jealous of you and Bobby. I thought… that’s what it’s like to be in a relationship. It must be great. I _need_ that in my life. Then I saw that other people aren’t the same as you and Bobby, that your relationship is like what it is because you two are perfect for each other. You’re what everyone wants to be. Yeah you argue but you two together is a masterpiece and it made me so mad because I wanted that too. I wanted someone who would lay with me at night and play with my hair and keep up stupid games with me. I wanted someone like you. I wanted _you_.”

Hanbin takes a breath to look over Youra. He smiles softly, but regretfully. She starts to think back to the times when they were together the past few weeks, and then to the time when you both spent time together before then, but mostly with Bobby there too. Bobby and Youra both weren’t shy of affection, they would hold hands and they’d say dumb stuff to each other which was enough to make anyone love sick from the outside. Youra and Hanbin grew apart because you made other friends who weren’t friends with Bobby and she didn’t end up spending every hour of the day with him.

“I realised that you were off limits a long time ago. That’s why I distanced myself and I noticed you doing the same too, so I thought you realised that I liked you. I mean, I’m sure Bobby realised too. I thought you all knew. I was wrong and I feel stupid about it though because it’s my fault that all of this happened. Yeah, we were drunk, but every time I’ve been drunk before I always go back to how I felt about you and I realise now that _no_, I never fell out of love with you. As much as I wish I would have. I know you wouldn’t have done it on purpose to hurt Bobby and he deserved to know that. You two deserve to be back together because that’s the way it always should have been.”

It takes Youra a moment.

She never realised that Hanbin distanced himself from her, too. She was busy with her relationship and other friends to realise. She just put it down to not seeing anyone from the group, she assumed that it was just because of their schedules and moved on with it. As it turns out, like in most cases, that’s never the answer here.

But Bobby deserved to know?

“You told him?”

Hanbin swallows harshly. “I told him that I took advantage of you being drunk because I was in love with you before. This isn’t something that you can just keep quiet this whole time, it needs to be said to him because it’s driving you two apart and that’s the _one_ thing I don’t want.”

“And he did that?” Youra asks, gesturing to his face.

“He was angry,” Hanbin states, laughing to himself, “I mean, you could have guessed that already, couldn’t you? This is Bobby we’re talking about.”

Youra shakes her head, looking down at the floor again. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s all in vain. He hasn’t spoken to me. He _won’t_ speak to me because this is Bobby and he’ll never forgive me for this, whether you take the blame or not.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t talk to you ever though!” Hanbin is frustrated again and she can tell. Even Junhoe would be able to tell. She wonders if Junhoe already said something to Hanbin, though she hopes not. “Talk to him. Sort out your relationship and forget I ever told you what I did. We can’t change the past but we can stop living in it. So just… forget it. Forget everything I said and we can move on because I’m living in a fantasy where I’ve convinced myself that you like me back when we are _friends_.”

And he walks away like that.

Maybe it’s because she feels bad, maybe it’s because she has started realise that patching things up with Bobby won’t happen – not because he didn’t want them to, but maybe because _she _didn’t want them to. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t like that Hanbin suffered for her and won’t get anything out of it.

Because facing anyone, especially Bobby, alone is not what she wants. She doesn’t think she would feasibly make it through the whole ordeal without breaking down once or twice and she tells herself that of anyone who has to go through it with her, pick someone who was as close to Bobby as she were.

And because she can have a change of her feelings, too.

“Wait, Hanbin.”

He turns around, almost at the door, and looks back to Youra with wide eyes. She feels bad that he did it alone, she wants to go back and change it and offer to go with him. She wishes she would have just spoke to him the past week because she did really miss him that entire time and each night she was alone she would check what he was doing, only to find he was doing absolutely nothing. The fact he’s there and _understands_ means more to her than it would have done before.

Hanbin’s been so stuck in his own head that he hasn’t had a chance to look at everyone else. Think about what she’s feeling and that maybe, _just maybe_, he’s shown her a different side to everything going on.

Because he’s not Bobby, and she needed to experience someone other than Bobby.

She tries her best to smile as her heart starts to race, a rush of every thought she’s ever had about Hanbin filling her mind. She “Don’t I get to tell you how I feel, too?”


End file.
